


gray areas

by theputterer



Series: cassian andor nonsense [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angels, Angst, As is Rogue One the film, Backstory, Betrayal, Canon Divergence - Star Wars Expanded Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming of Age, Dubious Morality, Existentialism, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Family Issues, Foreshadowing, Gen, Grief Is A Circular Staircase, Old Expanded Universe Canon Compliant, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Post-Rogue One, Pre-Canon, Pre-Rogue One, Rogue One Spoilers, Sibling issues, Star Wars References, Undercover Missions, spirituality, the Rogue One gang is also in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 49
Words: 199,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9456524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theputterer/pseuds/theputterer
Summary: Gray, in all its varieties, serves as a perfect understanding of who Cassian Andor is.Gray gives Cassian Andor’s life meaning. It colors it, entirely.The life of Cassian Andor, from the ice-covered mountains of Fest, to the white sand beaches of Scarif, and all the gray areas in between.





	1. Fest

Cassian Andor’s life is lived in the gray areas of the universe, the places that are ill-defined and uncertain, the spaces that fail to conform or extrapolate, pieces and images that all add up to a single person defined by gray.

Gray, in all its varieties, serves as a perfect understanding of who Cassian Andor is.

Gray gives Cassian Andor’s life meaning. It colors it, entirely.

Fest is gray, for better or worse. The planet is all snow and ice, though the human population has managed to cobble together settlements and cities capable of stifling this reality from its inhabitants. But outside the cities are snow-covered rocky mountains and abyss-like valleys that stretch for meters, and each one blurs the line between gray land and gray sky.

Cassian grows up believing the sky can be no other color but a murky gray that seeps into the earth and drowns out the sun.

When he thinks of that big open gray sky, and greatness, and beings that humble him, he thinks of his father, and his father’s voice.

(If Cassian tries, he thinks he can still remember his father’s voice.)

Gabriel Andor seems to tower over everyone he encounters, though Cassian knows he isn’t the tallest man on Fest, not even the tallest man in the capital city of Fulcra, where they live. Gabriel has a bright smile and a soft candor to his voice; he is effortlessly charming, almost genteel, so it is quite alarming to wayward visitors to fully comprehend what he actually means when he is speaking.

In the Outer Rim, the Republic is nefarious.

When he tries to hear his father’s voice, Cassian hears his father raging against a Republic set on building an army. He hears his father’s fury at the possibility that planets with more wealth, more technology, and more resources than them might come and unhinge the civilization that has prospered (more or less, and always in shades of gray, and always for better or worse) for so many years.

Fest is not, technically, a member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, a so-called government that is established when Cassian is two years old. But the citizens of Fest largely agree with the Confederacy’s ideals, though it’s more in a bid to remain alone than for anything else, and so Gabriel quietly but efficiently builds his own little coalition of pro-secessionists, where one of his cohorts suggests they brand themselves as members of the Separatist Alliance, a name Gabriel finds more palatable than the Confederacy of Independent Systems.

“ _Separatist Alliance_ is an oxymoron,” says Cassian’s mother.

(Cassian knows he can remember his mother’s voice, though she only outlived her husband by four years.)

Serafima Andor has long curly hair, darker than the underground tunnels Cassian traverses to get around Fulcra during its frequent snowstorms. She is fairly tall, like Gabriel, and others appear smaller around her too, but really because people seem to bow to her. There is something about her that is regal, almost ancient. Snow seems to dance around her, out of her way, and Cassian spends his childhood with her carefully copying her steps to avoid the snow that shies away from her but attempts to smother him.

He thinks it is because she is not from Fest, not originally, that the planet recognizes her as an outsider and does its best to avoid her.

Gabriel says it is because even storms must defer to _someone_ , and it might as well be Cassian’s mother.

Serafima is loyal to the Republic. It is a great matter of contention between her and Gabriel, and though they try to hide it from their three children, they are both not as subtle as they think they are, and have children savvier than they anticipated.

Nerezza is six years older than Cassian, and Zeferino is four years older. Nerezza looks like their mother, while Zeferino looks like their father, more or less. But when Nerezza yells, she matches the look on Gabriel’s face when their mother suggests a family trip to Coruscant to see Republican museums, and when Zeferino scowls, he looks like Serafima upon accidentally eating an unripened camby berry.

Well-meaning friends and neighbors tell Cassian they hope he grows up to have his father’s stature and cheekbones, and his mother’s grace and smile. He leaves Fest before any of them can learn if their hopes are realized.

(They are.)

(More or less.)

Cassian is the baby of the family, the newest member, the mystery.

His father and his mother try to mold him to fit their divergent ideals.

“Do not listen to your father,” Serafima scoffs, her voice carrying over the wind as they traverse the city streets, bound for the market. “The Republic is inherently good. Trust in it. There is nothing sinister, no grand conspiracy to be found.”

“Your mother is an idealist,” Gabriel grumbles, looking at Cassian from over his parka as they stand in line to send various shipments of recruitment packets to cities and settlements across the planet. “The Separatists will give us more freedom, more say in how we run our lives. This is good for us.”

(The sound of their voices becomes only memory, and eventually just fragments of memories.)

(Cassian thinks he can hear them, if he tries.)

(He mostly does not want to try.)

* * *

 

The Clone Wars begin when Cassian is two years old. He will never know or remember a life without them.

He is four years old when the Clone Wars move into their second year, and yet war has not really reached Fest, which continues to shuffle along as a world of ice and gray. But the tone and frequency of visitors waxes and wanes, bringing new tides of news that is received either with relief or disappointment, depending on the Andor who hears it.

Though both Gabriel and Serafima insist they most want to see peace, each also desires a positive outcome for their chosen side. When the Senate votes to give the Chancellor emergency powers to create an army for the Republic, and a clone army appears seemingly the next day, Serafima stays silent as Gabriel leads mass protests around Fulcra, and then returns home at night to rage and yell indoors. Nerezza, ten years old, defers to her father in all things, but remains at her mother’s side rather than riot in the streets with her father. She tells four-year-old Cassian that it’s because riots can be dangerous, but even then Cassian is aware of his mother enough to know Nerezza is far more frightened of her immediate wrath.

Eight-year-old Zeferino teaches Cassian how to cook while their parents argue in the next room.

(Later, Cassian will realize his brother’s cooking tips were actually survival lessons, and the greatest gift he could give him.)

Following the start of the Clone Wars, Gabriel begins running a recruitment outpost for the Separatists on Fulcra. It is a big, outspoken, no-going-back move, and Serafima will not forgive him for it. Cassian is four years old when his parents split up. He moves with his mother, sister, and brother to a house on the outskirts of the city, where Serafima determines they will be safest.

His father visits once or twice a week, or when he can. He did not fight Serafima on the move. On this, the safety of their children and the precarity of Fulcra, they agree.

With his wife and children away from him, Gabriel himself enlists for the Confederacy of Independent Systems, what the Separatists are now officially known as. He is well-respected by the recruits, and is quickly named as the leader of the not-actually-on-the-books Insurrectionist Cell in Fulcra. And if anyone else had been running the cell, it might have been left well alone by the Republic.

Because what is Fest, to the Republic, but a barren hellscape, more or less? What is there to mine, buried in the ice? What of the people, frozen and dark-haired and living under gray sky and sharp rock?

But Gabriel Andor runs the Insurrectionist Cell on Fest, and it breaches the radar of the Republic.

Cassian is five years old when he sees his first clone soldier.

His sister snatches his hand and practically drags him through a snowdrift in an effort to get away.

His brother stares at the soldier for longer.

His mother is quiet when they tell her.

Eventually, she commends Nerezza for ushering them away, and softly scolds Zeferino for lingering. She sits Cassian down and warns him to avoid the men in the strange white armor.

Cassian frowns at this. “I thought they were good?”

He knows enough to understand that the clones are on Fest on behalf of the Republic, and he definitely knows his mother supports the Republic.

“Yes,” Serafima says. “But they do not know you are also good.”

Cassian watches a squad of clones set fire to a local restaurant for its owners’ Separatist sympathies. He listens to the holonet and hears about a group of clones that murdered a man in front of his family for sending medical supplies to a Separatist outpost. He witnesses a clone soldier shoot a woman in the street for loudly decrying the Chancellor.

He stares as her blood stains the snow and ice red. It is a shock of color in a world so starkly gray.

And Cassian thinks he is not sure he wants to be good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time here, so hello! (I am theputterer at tumblr too.)
> 
> The descriptions of Fest are based on the old canon EU info found on Wookiepedia; this is technically not canon anymore, but whatever.
> 
> This story can be divided into three even parts, so if you were looking to pace yourself, I'd start here. Part I: Soldier (Ch. 1-16), Part II: Spy (Ch. 17-32), Part III: Rebel (Ch. 33-48) and then there's an Afterward.


	2. Civil War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is five years old and lives in a galaxy that is poised to tear itself apart in full civil war, but his family does their best to hide this reality from him.

Cassian is five years old and lives in a galaxy that is poised to tear itself apart in full civil war, but his family does their best to hide this reality from him.

Gabriel, Serafima, eleven-year-old Nerezza and even nine-year-old Zeferino all plot to behave like a unified family, even though they are splitting at the seams with political disagreement. Gabriel and Serafima still love each other, but find their political views to be polarizing, and destabilizing. They are both fiercely stubborn, and have ferociously tied their ideological beliefs to their own personal identities, meaning they are no longer compatible. But while their core political philosophies lie with differing causes, they keep a separate part of themselves exclusively for their children, and their matching devotion to them.

“I love you so much, Cassi,” says Serafima one day over dinner, when Cassian has asked her for the fourth time that week where Papa is, and why he hasn’t been living in the new house with them. Cassian is five years old, and while he’s grown up with his father spending long hours working away from the family home, he’s noticed that he has been seeing a lot less of his father lately, and it’s now beginning to truly concern him.

“Please remember that. Your father and I. We love you, so much,” says Serafima.

“I am sorry I cannot be home more,” says Gabriel, when Cassian broaches the same topic with him. “I would be home more, if I could. If I thought it was the right thing to do.

“One day, I hope you will understand why I have done the things I have,” says Gabriel.

Cassian doesn’t know what Gabriel is talking about or what it means, but he internalizes the words nonetheless.

(He will forever look back at his father with confusion, and an odd sense of guilt, with a dash of revelation.)

(This is why he does not like to remember his father.)

Nerezza and Zeferino try to distract him from their parents’ obvious marital issues, by taking Cassian out of the house with them, to the market, to a cheap cafe, on any kind of errand run, or to simply play. Nerezza teaches Cassian how to ice-board, walking carefully beside him and holding his hand as he wobbles, gleeful and nervous, staring at the blissfully white snow as he slides over it. Zeferino takes Cassian to the main underground public gymnasium closest to their house, where he invites Cassian to play wallball with him and his friends. Cassian is a much worse player than Zeferino and his friends, but Zeferino allows him to think it’s because he’s smaller than them, when in actuality it’s largely because Cassian has not yet developed proficient hand-eye coordination.

(Not yet.)

His balance, and eyesight, however, are quite good.

(This will become important later on.)

But for now, Cassian is five years old, and loved desperately by his siblings.

Nerezza and Zeferino take Cassian on long walks around the outskirts of Fulcra, where the three siblings scale tall silvery cliffs and rugged gray hillsides with only their gloves and boots for traction and aid. Nerezza always leads the way, swift and surefooted, and Cassian clambers after her, trying and failing to mime her inherent gracefulness, wondering if one day he will be similarly light-footed and agile.

(He will be.)

(Nerezza will not live to see it.)

He settles for copying Nerezza’s movements, staring up the rocky cliff face, and letting Nerezza cajole and encourage him, as he bites his lip and focuses on where he places his hands on the gray rock, listening intently as she calls down to him.

“Come on, Cassi, just one more step!”

“And one more!”

“You’re almost there, keep going!”

“Follow my voice, you’re almost there!”

She tugs him over the top of the cliff and cackles with delight, as Cassian pants and sweats but smiles widely, thrilled with how proud his big sister is of him.

Zeferino goes more slowly behind his siblings, picking his way across the rocks with the confidence and swank of a strategist. While Nerezza is free and rash, Zeferino is more understated and cautious. He takes care to leave space between himself and his more enthusiastic climber siblings, and though Nerezza and Cassian both laugh at him for it, they do so with the knowledge that if either of them falls, Zeferino may be able to catch them.

At the end of the day, the three of them trudge home, cheeks painted red with the cold, and more often than not with Cassian tucked between Nerezza and Zeferino as they walk as a three-person wall. Cassian clings to his siblings’ gloved hands, and defers to their lead in most things, because Nerezza and Zeferino are his gateways to the world outside their house, to a world that, for a five year old, is Fulcra only.

Cassian knows that he lives on a decently sized and well-populated planet he has barely seen a fraction of, and that there is an entire galaxy out there, filled with more worlds and cultures than he can possibly reach or comprehend in his single lifetime, but for now, he is warmly and gratefully content with the gray planet of Fest, and the gray capital city of Fulcra, and his generous siblings and his doting mother and his somber father, even when they behave in ways he cannot understand.

Like when his father comes to the house for dinner, and studiously avoids his mother’s eyes.

Like when his mother hands his father his coat at the door, and takes care to not brush his hand.

Like when his sister turns the holonet off when she sees their brother walk into the room.

Like when his brother hides recruitment packets for the Republican Navy under his mattress when his sister calls his name from down the hall.

Cassian does not quite understand why they do any of this, and when he asks, he gets the same response:

_You’ll understand one day, Cassi._

None of them anticipate how soon that day is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next one will be longer!


	3. Be Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Cassian is six years old, his father is killed on Carida.

When Cassian is six years old, his father is killed on Carida.

Gabriel is attending a protest at the Military Academy on Carida, condemning the Republic’s grandiose and ruthless clone army, urging civilians to not enlist, to stay home. (Or, if they must enlist, to abandon the Academy and its armed forces for the Separatist forces stationed on Carida.) The main point, Gabriel stresses to Cassian as he packs for the trip, is to show that the Separatist Alliance--

“An oxymoron,” says Cassian.

“Don’t listen to your mother so much,” says Gabriel.

\--The point is to show that the Separatists, and the regular men and women who support them, want peace and freedom and accountability.

“And the Republic does not want these things?” Cassian asks. He wants to understand.

Here, Gabriel hesitates. Cassian looks at his father, at his father’s thin frame (he eats less without Serafima, and he never had a brother who made him learn to cook), and at the way his father seems to deflate like a pile of melting gray snow. It is the first time that six-year-old Cassian sees the unspoken but sinister effect the war has had on his father.

“Papa?”

Gabriel turns to where Cassian is perched on his father’s rickety camp bed, in the near-destitute apartment his father rents in the heart of Fulcra, surrounded on all sides by apartments filled with his fellow Separatist sympathizers. The apartment is always cold; most buildings and homes on Fest are cold, it’s inevitable with the snow and ice climate, but Cassian thinks his father’s apartment is especially cold. Nerezza agrees, but says it’s because their mother is never there, and that their father is cold and sad without her. Zeferino says she’s probably right, but the apartment’s central heater’s energy cell is faulty also.

“Cassian,” Gabriel says, kneeling before his son. “The Republic is not… all bad. Democracy is always worth fighting for, yes?”

Cassian isn’t so sure he knows what democracy is, but agrees anyway, because he knows it’s what his father wants to hear.

"That system is worth keeping,” says Gabriel. “But the leaders in the Republic… And this army… We simply want to be left alone, Cassian. To live and run our own lives. I want to live in peace and quiet with my family. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Cassian thinks that he does not want to be alone. He likes cooking with Zeferino, and ice-boarding with Nerezza. He likes going to the market with his mother, and having the baker greet them with enthusiasm while slipping a loop pastry into his hand. And he likes spending time with his father, even in this miserable little apartment that is always so cold.

He supposes he would not mind being alone if his family is with him, so he nods.

“I believe in freedom, Cassian,” says Gabriel. “I believe in my family, and my friends, and my neighbors. I want a good, free, life for us all. That is why I fight. That is what I am fighting for. Do you understand? What do you think about that?”

“I want it,” says Cassian, and even at six years old, he does. He understands that much, wants that much, that sketched out dream of a peaceful life.

His father hugs him tightly, pushes his hair from his eyes, presses a kiss to his forehead.

“I hope you will forgive me for all this, one day,” says Gabriel.

“For what, Papa?” Cassian asks, but Gabriel doesn’t answer. He only shakes his head, smiling at his youngest son.

“Most beloved boy,” says Gabriel. “Be kind. Be good.”

 _Be kind. Be good_.

 _Be good_.

 _But what_ , Cassian wonders in silence, on the way home to his mother, _does that mean?_

_How can I be good?_

He thinks of goodness as his brother taking extra time to show Cassian the shortcut behind a trash compactor that’ll halve his walk to school. He thinks of goodness as his sister stopping him before he leaves the house because he has a bit of food stuck on the edge of his mouth. He thinks of goodness as his mother presses a spare credit into the hands of a beggar outside a transport station. He thinks of goodness as his father wraps a blanket around Cassian’s shoulders as he plays with toys in the cold apartment.

Cassian wonders how he is good to his family.

Gabriel goes to Carida. He yells and rages on the Academy steps, demanding the Republic enter into peace talks with the Separatists, and disband the clone army.

Cassian and Nerezza watch the protest on the holonet in their mother’s warm house. Cassian picks his father out of the crowd. He studies his father’s features, the sharp jawline and short dark hair, the way the crowd gravitates towards his inherent authority.

He is looking at his father, the leader, the mouthpiece, iridescent and influential, when his father is blown into pieces.

Nerezza, sitting beside Cassian, screams. The picture in the holonet flickers, displaying a shower of angry red and orange sparks that are quickly consumed by thick gray smoke. Ashes and scorched debris rain down, and Cassian realizes the Academy is burning, and his father is dead.

Serafima comes running. Zeferino is still. Someone turns the holonet off.

Mourners converge on the house. Cassian is shuffled from neighbor to neighbor, numbly accepting their dishes of comfort food, steaming keela soups and hearty Festian roast. They all tell him how sorry they are, how _too bad_ losing his father is, with him so young and having two siblings, and his mother left all alone to raise them singlehandedly. Cassian never knows how to reply, and finds himself spending more and more time hiding in the attic. It’s bitterly cold up there, but even the bitter cold is preferable to another minute with a solemn well-wisher, all of whom seem to know Cassian’s father better than he ever did.

For the first time in his life (but not the last time) Cassian prefers being alone.

Serafima cries once, when she has to fight the Republic to get them to send Gabriel’s remains back to Fest. Cassian listens to his mother’s hologram calls with a harried-looking Republic official, as she tells the Republic that her husband was born on Fest, raised on Fest, barely ever left Fest, and had planned to die on Fest as well.

“He deserves to be buried on Fest,” Serafima says, and Cassian stares at his mother’s tears, so foreign and unwelcome. “As his wife, I demand to see him again. That is my _right_.”

Serafima’s support for the Republic does not die with her husband. She never explicitly tells Cassian why she continues to support a government that killed her husband, and Cassian would never ask her directly, so he goes for the next best thing by asking Nerezza and Zeferino. Nerezza’s face sours instantly, while Zeferino looks thoughtful.

“Mama has loved the Republic all her life,” says Zeferino. “She’s loved Papa for much less time than that. She doesn’t want to lose them both at once.”

Nerezza looks like she wants to argue, but either cannot find the words or decides the fight isn’t worth it. She shrugs instead. Cassian decides it doesn’t matter anyway.

The Republic eventually acquiesces to Serafima’s ferocity, if only in an effort to get her to stop calling. Gabriel is returned in a small steel box. He’s literally in tatters, body blown away, and Serafima sharply tells her children that none of them are to open the box.

The box is a small comfort. Having it will have to be enough for the children. It is enough for her.

It has to be enough. It is all they get to have.

The steel box is buried in the gray earth, beneath an equally gray sky, as snow starts to fall.

Cassian holds his mother’s hand. He doesn’t cry.

He’s in shock, or at least, this is what Nerezza says when Zeferino looks at Cassian with worry apparent in his gaze.

Cassian doesn’t know what shock is, or what it means. Or is it simply a word used to describe the ice that has curdled in his stomach, the heavy weight that feels attached to his limbs?

He doesn’t ask.

(He isn’t wrong.)

After the burial, Serafima is rigid, and sad, but still all together. Cassian’s mother has always worked; she’s a potter, famous for her beautiful and delicate pieces, a talent that could only have been honed somewhere other than Fest, making her work all the more exotic and desirable. But with Cassian’s father dead and buried in a cold pit just past their house, she takes a second job, waitressing at the Bothan food place half a mile away.

Cassian’s father is dead, and he never sees him anymore, but now it feels like he never sees his mother as well.

With their mother gone from the house so often, Nerezza, at twelve years old, and Zeferino, at ten years old, more or less become Cassian’s guardians.

Zeferino has Cassian cook breakfast, and then teaches him how to mend his own clothes and repair his thickest winter snow boots, watching him with a critical frown while the holonet blares with the news of various Republican victories and other propaganda. (Zeferino is his mother’s son, and never more so than when he’s consuming news; he is also his mother’s son in that he does not abandon his cause after his father’s death, even if he only watches it from a distance.) Zeferino makes sure Cassian goes to school, that he is polite to his teachers and the neighbors. He makes it clear that he, and their mother, expect Cassian to keep his head down, and to stay out of trouble.

Unfortunately for Zeferino and their mother, Nerezza has taken up their father’s mantle, coating herself in the gray ashes that is their father’s legacy.

Nerezza signs up for the Separatists the day after their father’s Separatist sympathizers-filled funeral. They are pleased to have her; Gabriel was well-liked, near beloved, among the soldiers, and Nerezza is his spirit reincarnate at twelve years old.

She is not the youngest soldier, even at twelve years old.

Rather, Cassian becomes the youngest soldier, at six years old.

Zeferino is held up at the market one day, so Nerezza brings Cassian with her to the Fest Insurrectionist Cell’s main headquarters, rather than leave him at home alone, which Cassian thinks would’ve been the option their mother would prefer. He does not disclose this belief to Nerezza, as he’s curious about the Separatists.

The Insurrectionist Cell’s main headquarters is bigger than he anticipated, but Cassian is six, and most things are big to him.

The soldiers laugh when they see him, all gawky and small with big eyes, but quiet up when Nerezza introduces him. They introduce themselves, shaking his hand, nodding their heads, but remain confused as to why he’s there, as he’s obviously far too young for any of this.

It’s Cassian who offers to carry their messages for them.

There are fears that the Republic has hacked into their channels, that it’s eager to squash the Fest Separatists with Gabriel newly dead, that there’s a good chance to do so now. The Festians worry that their rebellion will be broken up by an inability to communicate with each other, and with how vivacious and conversational Gabriel was, it feels like a great indignity, that the Insurrectionist Cell he headed should die in a muffled whisper.

Cassian says he’ll carry their paper messages himself, in his own pockets, across Fulcra.

The clone troopers will never be suspicious of a six-year-old boy walking alone.

The Separatist soldiers balk.

He’s too young, too innocent, too _small_ , to even be near them.

_He will be crushed by the war._

Nerezza pulls him aside. His sister’s face is very serious, and she looks more like their father than she ever has before.

“Cassi,” says Nerezza. “You don’t have to do this.”

_He will be crushed by the war._

“I know,” says Cassian. “But I want to, Ezza. For Papa.”

Nerezza studies him, as if she can find uncertainty or hesitation in Cassian’s features. Instead, she sees their father.

She agrees.

“You can never tell Mama. Or Zeferino.”

Cassian agrees.

Cassian becomes a child soldier. He’s six years old.

He can’t understand the messages he stuffs in his pockets and in the lining of his parka and the soles of his boots. They’re encoded pieces on scraps of paper, but Cassian treats them like real currency. He walks and runs everywhere around Fulcra, until he knows the city like it’s an extension of himself. He delivers the messages to bizarre aliens, beings he’s never seen or heard of before, but is more surprised at the people he’s grown up with who receive the messages.

Most of the recipients laugh when he presses a note into their hands.

A few of them cry at the sight of him passing on secret intelligence.

Many of them give him a treat or two, and an occasional, unasked for, hug.

Though Nerezza gives Cassian explicit instructions to only deliver messages and return immediately to base, Cassian finds himself rebelling against his sister’s tense words. It begins when he’s in the Financial District, headed home after dropping off a message, when he sees an Imperial Walker and a handful of clone troopers raiding a cafe he used to frequent with his father. The sight of the figures trashing a place that Cassian treasures so much in his memories, fills Cassian with a sudden, bright red rage.

It’s like a flare, like a blaster shot, and Cassian reacts instinctively to it.

He bends down and picks up a rough stone from the street, likely unlodged by the Walker. He grips it tight, and then throws it at the thing. It hits the Walker’s heavy metal armor with a loud _clang_.

Cassian has thrown three additional stones before the clone troopers finally spot him, a small boy standing in the street. They point at him and yell, telling him to clear the area. He does so, reluctantly, but aware that alone and six years old, he cannot take on a squad of troopers and an Imperial Walker.

They all look at him and see only a small child. Someone who could never be a threat to the Republic.

Cassian is six years old when he starts fighting. He never stops.

He only grows up.

He learns how to be threatening.

He becomes a threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon: Cassian's father is killed at a Military protest on Carida, and Cassian as a child soldier throws rocks at Imperial Walkers. (via Wookiepedia, and via "The Visual Guide to ROGUE ONE", I believe).
> 
> Not canon: the message carrying, and then all the family details, obviously.
> 
> Me: theputterer on tumblr dot com. definitely feel free to say hi if you are reading this!


	4. Siblings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is seven years old when the Separatist Council is killed, and the Republic falls, reorganized into the Galactic Empire.

Cassian is seven years old when the Separatist Council is killed, and the Republic falls, reorganized into the Galactic Empire.

The year is 3258 LY.

War finally comes to Fest. The Confederacy is all but gone, and aid has largely dried out, but the Empire determines Fest, and its people, might still be worth their resources. They continue to send squads and ships and clones and guns, but what’s left of the Separatists haven’t been able to cobble together similar resources. The rebelling Festians are on their own.

Nerezza is thirteen years old, and has already seen battle. She comes home late one night and wakes up Cassian, to tell him about the shootout she just witnessed in the Arts District of Fulcra. She describes the noxious gas smell of a bombing with enthusiasm, but hesitates in telling Cassian what human skin smells like when it’s on fire.

Cassian urges her on.

He needs to know.

Zeferino, meanwhile, is generally suspicious of his siblings’ activities. He is not stupid enough to not know about Nerezza’s involvement with the Separatists, and their father’s Insurrectionist Cell. He is also shrewd enough to determine there is very little he can do to dissuade his older sister from fighting, short of getting their mother involved, but he also knows Nerezza would never forgive him for such an action, and that their mother might very well be unable to stop her anyway. But while Cassian is more of an enigma to Zeferino regarding his political beliefs (if he can have any, Zeferino reasons, as Cassian is seven years old) Zeferino believes Cassian to be loyal to him, and to their mother, and by distant extension, to the Empire.

He changes his mind when Cassian comes home one night, hair singed, with blaster burns on his cheek.

Zeferino sits Cassian down on the floor, dropping a med kit next to him, and prepares to cuss him out with all the words his sister taught him and their mother refuses to hear him say. But he catches the shell-shocked horror in Cassian’s watery brown eyes, and forgets his rage. He slides to the floor next to him, instead, and uncaps the burn salve.

“Did Nerezza make you do this?”

“No, Zef,” says Cassian, and Zeferino believes him. Nerezza loves Cassian, he knows.

“Tell me what happened,” he says.

Cassian tells him about loitering around the Port of Fulcra, and watching the ships from deep space come in, many loaded with meager supplies for the Fest rebels. (Cassian had no reason to be at the Port, save for the fact that he likes watching the ships.) He tells him about seeing the Imperial gunship come in, loaded with clone troops, and how everyone in the port seemed to freeze all at once. He tells him about how the gunship barely touched down before clones were pouring out, and shooting at anything they could see. How the gunship lifted off again to fire bigger blasts. How a laser from the ship barely missed him, and didn’t, really. How Cassian clambered into a pile of dirty gray snow for a poor shelter, because there were no other options. How he shivered and trembled in the grit for nearly an hour, listening to the screams and wails of the dying. How he eventually stumbled out of the snow and limped home.

How he didn’t know he’d been bleeding, or lost some hair from a laser blast, until Zeferino told him.

Zeferino waits for him to stop talking. He finishes patching him up, and warns him that he’ll have to cut his hair or have an off-kilter look for a while.

“I’m sorry you had to see all of that,” says Zeferino.

“Not surprised,” says Cassian, though he’s unsure if he’s describing himself or Zeferino. He’s still shaking, he realizes.

“It was only a matter of time,” says Zeferino.

Zeferino is eleven years old. In some ways, he is more of a father to Cassian than Gabriel ever was. They both know this (and Gabriel might have, too) but they would never say it aloud.

“Cassi,” says Zeferino. “You don’t have to do this.”

Cassian just blinks at him.

He’s a baby. A child. He isn’t tall enough to reach the cabinets in the kitchen, can barely move a pot off the back stove, needs assistance in shoveling the walkway, and still asks Zeferino to help him buckle up his boots for ice-boarding.

Cassian is seven years old. Gabriel has been dead for a little over a year.

“Why do you do this?” Zeferino asks.

“I want to help,” says Cassian.

“Why them?”

Zeferino supports the Empire, like his mother. Nerezza knows this, and so the two of them take care to never speak of politics, looking at how it broke their parents apart. Their family is already too heavily fractured. They fear it cannot take another hit.

“For Papa,” says Cassian. “Because he’d want me to.”

“Not for this,” says Zeferino, and he touches his little brother’s burned face.

“For good,” says Cassian. “To be good.”

“Cassi,” says Zeferino. “You’re already good.”

Cassian is seven years old. Zeferino wonders where Cassian learned to value goodness, and where he learned the quantities of it, the parameters of the thing. He wonders when he counted himself out.

He worries that he is not wrong.

He worries goodness is not a black and white thing, but a spectrum, in shades of gray.

He does not know where his family falls.

* * *

 A Republic bomb, planted by clone soldiers, blows up two entire buildings in the Industrial District of Fulcra, and the resulting fire sends another seven buildings to ashes before response crews, aided by the historically low temperatures of a particularly gruesome Fest winter, are able to quell the flames.

Cassian is in the area when the bomb goes off. He’s not hurt, not physically; he isn’t bleeding, wasn’t even thrown back by the force of the blast. But he does have a sheet of gray ashes coating his body, and piling in his hair, an arid and grim approximation of the wonder of snowfall.

He remains in the vicinity as the city burns, watching the brightness of the flames, utterly enraptured.

Fire is essential to life on Fest, but it is always contained.

Unless the fire is metaphorical, in which case Cassian sees it daily, in his sister, Nerezza.

Cassian is seven years old. Nerezza is thirteen years old, and a rising star among the rebels.

She’s a beacon, in every sense of the word. She is constantly cajoling and comforting her fellow soldiers, offering laughter and sympathy as easily as one can step outside and scoop up a handful of blisteringly white snow. Nerezza might not look much like her dead father, but she speaks like him, to the point some of the adult rebels whisper that she must be channeling his spirit, his direction, through her.

Cassian thinks this is an insult to Nerezza, who has always shimmered in spite of their father’s constant requests that she be careful, that she be thoughtful.

Nerezza is brilliant, but prone to recklessness, and anger sometimes seems to be her configured default state. She attacks squads of clone troopers with almost exalted impunity, with rebels twice her age lined up behind her to offer support, even if they only have the time to hand her a new blaster when hers runs out of ammunition or becomes fried with the frequency of her shooting. And when the blasters are done for, Nerezza throws hers aside like it’s just a spare part she no longer needs, and attacks the clone soldiers with her fists, her knees, her teeth.

She doesn’t really have a refined fighting style. She is self-taught, more or less. Gabriel knew how to fight, and to fight well, how to punch and inflict pain, but he never taught his daughter. He never wanted to need to, although if he’d been honest with himself, he would’ve seen all the signs there.

Nerezza looks like her mother, but she is her father’s daughter. She carries his beliefs and ideals, and enfolds them in her soul and takes them to her heart. They are the only things from this galaxy that she will take with her to her grave, one day.

Cassian asks Nerezza to teach him how to fight.

And, once again, Nerezza follows her father’s fading footsteps: she says no.

“Why not?” Cassian asks, mostly confused.

“You’re too young,” says Nerezza, and Cassian thinks he should’ve seen that one coming.

He does have an argument for it.

Cassian tells her about the bombings he’s seen. He tells her what human beings sound like when they’re trapped under the rubble of their homes. He tells her about his classmate Aliah, Aliah with short hair and freckles and a crooked smile, Aliah who never came to school one day, and Cassian wondered why until his teacher began class the next day with a note that Aliah and her family had been kidnapped by the Empire.

He tells her that he knows what guns are being used based on the sounds they make when they fire blasters.

He mimics the noises, but Nerezza doesn’t laugh.

And then he shows her the war, and what he understands, as best as he can.

Cassian shows her the ash on his coat and in his hair, the gray ash that falls as frequently on him as snow and ice does. He shows her his hands, how his skin is still slightly red from the dark blood he tried to keep inside the shopkeeper who’d been thrown back by the bomb blast. He rolls up his sleeve and shows her the thin white scars from when he was nearly shot by a blaster, that one time, although he’s been almost shot many times.

Nerezza brushes her fingers over the scars on his arm.

She doesn’t tell him she has identical scars on her own arm.

Cassian is seven years old.

To his sister now, Cassian says, “I want to help.”

Nerezza touches his face, which is so blissfully and almost bizarrely unmarked. “You help so much already, Cassi.”

“I want to help more,” says Cassian. “I want to be like you.”

And Nerezza feels such guilt. Such guilt for whatever has grown in her little brother, realizes for the first time that not only is she not actually a conduit of her father’s spirit, but that her little brother is not one either.

He may, though, be a reflection of her.

She supposes time will tell. She supposes this aspect of Cassian might be inevitable.

She cannot protect her brother, but maybe, she can save him.

“I am not much of a fighter,” Nerezza says.

(By that she means: _I am not much_.)

“But I will try to help you,” Nerezza says. And then, because she fears their family does not say it enough, for whatever reason, she adds, “I love you, Cassi.”

“I love you, Ezza,” Cassian returns, with a grin that is so bright, it’s practically fire.

Cassian is seven years old.

Nerezza hopes she will not burn for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the year as being 3258 LY comes via Wookiepedia, the light of my life 
> 
> (if the LY calendar is not your style, it's 19 BBY)


	5. The Rodian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is eight years old when he kills for the first time.
> 
> (The first time; it will not be the last.)
> 
> (Not by a lot.)

Cassian is eight years old when he kills for the first time.

(The first time; it will not be the last.)

(Not by a lot.)

Cassian still runs messages for his father’s Insurrectionist Cell, but lately they’ve been stylizing themselves as an outlet of the Rebellion. That’s the name they’ve been hearing in whispers across the galaxy, rumors of an underground group working to upend the still-burgeoning Empire. It’s all very new, and very young, and very unstable.

These are also words that would describe Cassian, perhaps up until the day he kills a man.

Cassian can now decode the messages he carries, but he takes care not to, because he’s been ordered not to. He’s Private Andor now, a ranking bestowed on him by his sister, who’s First Sergeant Andor, and fourteen years old. They don’t have any official uniforms, so the ranking is only a spoken status symbol. They wouldn’t spend money on uniforms, even if they had some; the goal is to remain undetectable and anonymous.

Cassian is in the heart of Fulcra, delivering a message to one Wada Sangha, who turns out to be a Rodian who runs a general repair shop. Wada is the first Rodian Cassian has ever met, and the fascination must be apparent on his face, for Wada invites him inside for Zoochberry cobbler and stories about his home planet, Rodia.

Wada has short antennae that Cassian cannot take his eyes off of. This makes Wada laugh, and he bends over without waiting for Cassian to ask, allowing Cassian to brush his fingers against his antennae.

“How old are you, little one?”

“I’m eight years old,” says Cassian, and for good measure, he displays the age with his fingers. The Rodian laughs more.

“Not so little for this work then,” says Wada. “Where I come from, our young start hunting as soon as they can run!”

The Rodians are hunters, and many of them become bounty hunters in the Outer Rim, though a handful make it even further than that. Wada never fancied himself much of a bounty hunter, but he has the training, and could be one if he wished. Rodia is a rich, jungle planet, covered in swamps and oceans. It’s hot too, and Wada describes the sweltering heat, and the bubble-domes that cover the settlements on the planet. He points to his own green skin, and tells Cassian that the color dominates the planet.

It is unfathomable to Cassian, whose life is colored by so much gray.

“Where is Rodia?”

“On the other side of the Corellian Run,” says Wada, as though Cassian knows what the Corellian Run is, and has any idea of where it is. He gathers from Wada’s voice that it is a long ways away from Fest.

That’s one thing Cassian knows he can do: read and comprehend voice inflection. It’s a secret, understated gift, and he’s honing it brilliantly.

(It’s a gift that will save his life, over and over again.)

“Why did you move _here?_ ” Cassian asks, for what he really can’t understand is why anyone would leave such color and warmth for the monochromatism and iciness of Fest.

Wada’s bug-eyes grow impossibly darker. “The Republic turned on us. Blocked official food shipments. I moved here to work, to send food on backchannels to my family back home.”

That’s a sentiment Cassian can easily understand.

Wada shows Cassian the various pieces he’s repairing, ship parts and complex holodisruptors and a frayed signal amplifier, all for the Rebellion. He tells Cassian that the message Cassian has brought says to expect a Class Two astromech droid for reprogramming for the Rebellion in the next week.

“You can do that? Reprogram a droid?” Cassian asks.

Wada laughs again. His laugh is almost reedy, and wheezy, like it has to fight to climb from his throat.

“Of course, Cassian,” says Wada. “Nothing is impossible to reprogram. I could reprogram you, if I wanted to!”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” says Cassian, and Wada roars with laughter.

“You seem just fine as yourself, my little friend,” says Wada. “But you might want to reprogram a droid of your own someday. I will teach you.”

“Stars,” Cassian says, delighted.

It is shortly after this exchange, when Cassian is helping Wada wash the dishes and thinking longingly of reprogramming a droid and having a new friend, that there’s a subtle thump outside the front door. Both Cassian and Wada pause, and Cassian looks at Wada. The Rodian shakes his head, waiting.

Another thump.

Wada goes to the door, pulling a blaster out from his belt. Cassian follows slowly, blaster-less, and nervous. He huddles by the table, out of sight, watching and waiting.

The door is blown off its hinges.

The assassin is a human, a pale-skinned man with no hair on his head. Wada manages to knock the blaster out of the assassin’s hand, and the two are tossed into a stack of bolts under the front window of the apartment. Cassian scrambles out from the other side of the table, and watches as the two grapple on the floor. The assassin’s blaster has gotten thrown out the still-ajar front door, and Wada’s slides across the floor, feet away from Cassian.

The assassin twists, and Wada grunts _Kriff!_ , before he’s thrown bodily across the room. The assassin twists to his feet.

Cassian shoots the assassin.

Without any hesitation.

The man sways for a heartbeat, and then crumples. Cassian has shot the man through the neck, and his throat is a mangled mess of vocal cords and tissue. Red blood gurgles sluggishly, staining Wada’s off-white tiled floor.

Cassian is so surprised, he forgets to be sick.

Wada is instantly there, clamping a green hand tight on Cassian’s shoulder. Cassian thinks the green of Wada’s skin and the blood of the assassin almost look nice, juxtaposed as they are.

“Go,” says Wada. “More will come.”

Numb. That’s the word. Cassian holds out the blaster, but Wada shakes his head.

“You may need it more,” says Wada. He hesitates, and adds, “You deserve it.”

Cassian nods, though Wada’s words do not sink in. He stumbles to the door, punch-drunk, a little unsteady.

“Wait,” calls Wada. “I did not get your family name. I want to find you. I have a lot to teach you.”

“Andor,” says Cassian. Wada nods, and Cassian leaves the dwelling.

He does not know why saying his name feels like a lie.

* * *

Wada does find Cassian, the next week.

He walks right up to the front door of the Andor house and knocks, and the door is opened by Zeferino, who takes one look at Wada, at his foreign green color and the heavy blaster on his hip, and promptly shuts the door.

Wada knocks again. Zeferino runs to find Cassian, who is playing alone in his room, oblivious.

“Get in the attic, Cassi,” Zeferino says, wrapping a hand around his elbow and yanking him to his feet. Zeferino’s face is drawn, eyes wide and scared.

“What’s happening?” Cassian asks, but instinct has him following his older brother’s directions, letting him tug him down the hall to the trapdoor in the ceiling that leads to the attic.

Zeferino does a quick hop, snagging the tether on the trapdoor handle and pulling it down. The ladder slides with it. “There’s a strange green man at the door, a Rodian. Nerezza’s ridiculous, terrible work has finally-”

“Is it Wada?” Cassian asks, before he can stop himself. Zeferino stills, turning to look at him, expression unreadable.

“Who is Wada, Cassi?”

But Cassian has already torn his arm from his brother’s grip, and is running down the hall Zeferino came from, leaving him behind. He sprints to the front room and goes to the front window, carefully peeking out.

He recognizes Wada, standing behind the closed door, looking somewhat nonplussed.

Cassian quickly opens the door.

The Rodian’s expression clears, turning into a grin.

“Hello, my little friend,” says Wada. He holds out one green hand, and Cassian notices for the first time that Rodians have suction cup-like apparatus at the ends of their five green fingers. With enthusiasm, he shakes Wada’s hand.

“Hello, Wada,” says Cassian, in Festian. Wada repeats the greeting, and Cassian nods, and he laughs.

“I have been here for many years and have somehow not yet learned your Festian language,” says Wada. “I will make more of an effort, now that I have a teacher.”

Cassian infers that he is to be the teacher, and beams.

Zeferino hovers in the doorway, eyeing Wada as Cassian brings him inside. Wada spots him and waves a gentle hand.

“I am Wada,” he tells him. “I am a friend of Cassian.”

“How do you know my brother?” Zeferino asks, no trace of greeting or politeness in his voice. Cassian finds himself suddenly ashamed of his brother, and his rudeness.

“We are new friends,” says Wada, as if that answers Zeferino’s question.

Zeferino still looks suspicious, but he allows Wada to stay, though he never goes far and keeps Cassian in his sights at all times.

Wada speaks candidly, either undaunted or unconcerned about Zeferino. He asks Cassian about his journey home from Wada’s house the other night (he never openly describes the events that occurred, Cassian killing the assassin, instead only taking care to ask Cassian about how he’s been feeling, if he’s doing all right, if his work has been nice to him) and then he tells Cassian about the Class Two astromech droid that had finally arrived the day previously.

“It is not ready for you to play with just yet,” says Wada. “But I hope that in a week or so, it will be. I will introduce you.”

Cassian grins and nods.

“Come to my house next centaxday. I will teach you,” says Wada. “I believe I have a lot to teach you.”

From his words, Cassian understands that Wada is not speaking only of teaching Cassian about the Class Two droid, but also about survival, and how to live in an unkind galaxy.

“Yes, please,” says Cassian.

Wada shakes his hand again at the door. He nods once to Zeferino, who’s still in the doorway, and gives Cassian one last warm smile before leaving the house. Cassian closes and locks the door behind him.

“ _Kriff_ , Cassian,” says Zeferino viciously, and Cassian is almost more surprised at his brother for calling him by his full name than his tone or his language. “Who is that man?”

“Wada,” says Cassian.

“Don’t be smart,” says Zeferino. He crosses the room and seizes Cassian by the shoulders, glaring down at him. Zeferino is twelve years old, and Cassian is eight years old, but in that moment Zeferino absolutely towers above him, looking almost horrifically just like their father. “Tell me the truth, Cassi. Who is he?”

“He fights for the Rebellion,” says Cassian, and it is the truth but it is also the wrong thing to say.

Zeferino slaps him across the face.

Cassian shakes with the blow.

“Do not bring that nonsense into this house,” Zeferino says, so fierce and angry, and almost supernaturally bright in his fury. “You leave it out there. It has no place here.”

“It’s not nonsense,” says Cassian, who comes rearing back, even in his shock and hurt.

“Yes, it is. Mama and I will not have it. Nerezza can do whatever she likes but you, you-”

“What about me? Why can’t I fight?”

“You are a _child_ , Cassi!” Zeferino says, yelling now. “You don’t know what you’re doing, or what you’re fighting for-”

“I am fighting for Papa, for Ezza,” says Cassian, and Zeferino goes silent.

“You fight for others, Cassi?”

Cassian pauses, because Zeferino’s voice sounds so strange, so unexpectedly soft. He blinks at his brother, certain his confusion must be apparent, certain that he will explain himself to a little brother who does not always fully understand his older siblings.

But Zeferino only waits.

“Yes, I do,” says Cassian at last.

“Why do you fight for them?”

“Because I want to,” says Cassian. “Because they’re good, and I want to be good, too.”

Zeferino stills again. He has a peculiar look on his face, like he is only seeing Cassian for the first time, and Cassian knows that isn’t correct but he has no other explanation for the wideness in his big brother’s eyes, the odd vulnerability of Zeferino’s expression.

“I see,” says Zeferino. “But have you considered that the Rebellion… is not good? That the Empire is better?”

And Cassian remembers his last conversation with his father, when his father explained how he wanted peace, to live a quiet life with his family, and how he didn’t believe he could have that under the Republic. And Cassian knows that the Republic has become the Empire, and the Separatists have become the Rebellion, and he knows who his father would fight for.

Cassian loves his family. He wants them to live. He wants to have peace.

Cassian knows who he will fight for.

So, to Zeferino, he says, “No.”

Zeferino nods his head, eyes downcast.

When he speaks again his voice is soft, and apologetic.

(Later, Cassian will realize his big brother’s voice was heavy with a leaded regret.)

(Oh, how black and white things are, to children.)

“This is where you and I differ, Cassi,” says his only brother.


	6. Serafima

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You think your sister is good? You think you’re good, by fighting for the Rebellion?” Serafima asks. But where Zeferino had had suspicion and anger when he asked similar questions, Serafima holds only concern and curiosity in her eyes.
> 
> The water is still hot around their hands, but Cassian’s uneasiness is almost negating its effects. He can’t look at his mother.

Zeferino tells Serafima that Cassian is fighting for the Rebellion.

Cassian considers this move a betrayal on Zeferino’s part, but doesn’t confront his brother on it. His face seems to still ache with the force of Zeferino’s slap, even though it’s been days and didn’t even leave a bruise. A Rebel soldier tells Cassian it’s phantom pain, like Cassian, eight years old, will know what that is.

(He makes a note to ask Nerezza or Wada about phantom pain later.)

(He’ll then realize it can’t be phantom pain because he hasn’t lost a limb.)

(Much later, he’ll realize that, in actuality, he lost his brother that day, and what is an older brother if not a support, as important as a limb?)

When Cassian gets home from school four days after his fight with his brother, it’s to hear his mother call his name from her studio.

A sense of impending doom grows in him, and he allows himself a moment to prepare for the biggest dressing down of his short life before following her voice.

Serafima’s studio isn’t much of a real studio. More accurately, it’s an extension of the garage, and was intended to be used as a repair room for a speeder or transport. It’s poorly insulated, and Serafima has to put on layer upon layer in order to spend any time in there. Cassian usually avoids the space entirely, because it’s never warm, and because Serafima goes there to work and to have quiet time away from her children.

Cassian is already shivering with apprehension when he walks inside the studio, and his shivering only increases at the chilly temperature.

Serafima is sitting in front of her potter’s wheel, which is spinning so quickly Cassian cannot look at it for long without getting dizzy. Her bare hands move assuredly over the soft brown clay, scaling the sides of the piece and adjusting wayward strands and holes. She has a thick gray scarf wrapped around her head, so Cassian can only see her sharp dark brown eyes, focused on the piece she’s working on. He hovers in the doorway, certain she has seen him anyway.

“How was school, Cassi?” Serafima asks, and she glances at him swiftly before returning to the piece.

Cassian shuffles into the room, pulling his coat more tightly around himself as the cold envelops him, wishing he had not taken his gloves off at the door. “It was good,” he says.

“What are you learning about?”

“Suns,” says Cassian, who suddenly has much to say. “Did you know there are planets with two suns? Sometimes even more? And some have colorful suns? And some have big suns, or are so close to them that the suns look bigger than they are?”

Serafima laughs, accidentally jostling the piece she’s sculpting. She carefully readjusts the piece before speaking. “Yes, I did. I grew up on a planet that was unusually close to its sun, remember?”

Cassian can remember his mother mentioning her childhood on Sernpidal, the dusty planet known for its deserts and seas and for being so close to its bright sun. He knows she left the planet when she was seventeen years old. And he’s asked her before why she left the planet, and she’s always given him vague responses that only leads to more questions, but he's seen the sadness in her eyes whenever he brings up the planet, and so he stays quiet now.

Serafima lets the wheel slow down, until it stops entirely, and Cassian sees she’s been sculpting an ornate, expensive vase. Serafima stands and crosses the room, lifting the lid off a steaming bin of water. She plunges her frozen hands into it and sighs in mingled pain and relief, before starting to scrub the excess clay from her fingernails.

“Cassi," she calls. “Your hands are turning gray with cold. Come here.”

Cassian moves to his mother’s side and bravely submerges his hands in the water next to hers, hissing in pain. Serafima smiles behind her scarf, and moves her hands through the water to hold Cassian’s. The two of them stand there in silence for a moment, looking at their clasped hands under the water, and for the first time Cassian notices that he has inherited his mother’s hands, her artistically long fingers.

“You know what Zeferino has told me,” Serafima says at last.

Cassian nods, but is unable to meet his mother’s eyes. “Yes.”

“And I’ve spoken to Nerezza,” says Serafima, which surprises Cassian. “She’s told me about the work you do for her, and for the Rebellion. Do you like this work, Cassi?”

“Yes,” says Cassian.

“Why?”

Cassian swallows, anxious, for Zeferino had asked him something similar and had not liked Cassian’s response.

“Because it’s good,” he says.

(And by that, he means, _Because I want to be good._ )

“You think your sister is good? You think you’re good, by fighting for the Rebellion?” Serafima asks. But where Zeferino had had suspicion and anger when he asked similar questions, Serafima holds only concern and curiosity in her eyes.

The water is still hot around their hands, but Cassian’s uneasiness is almost negating its effects. He can’t look at his mother.

“Do you do this for your father, Cassi?”

“Yes, Mama,” says Cassian.

“I support the Empire, Cassi. Why do you not fight for my cause? For Zeferino’s cause? Why do you fight for your sister’s cause? Why fight for your father’s cause?”

Cassian has known this, has always known that his mother supports the Republic, so it follows that her allegiance transitioned as the Republic did, to the Empire. But hearing it now, hearing the words from her mouth, is still a shock. He quivers, and almost unconsciously tugs his hands from his mother’s grasp in the clear hot water, moving his so they’re out of reach of hers.

“Because I agree with them,” says Cassian. “I agree with the Rebellion.”

“Cassi, you are eight years old. How are you sure that you agree with a political ideology you can’t understand?”

“But I do understand it,” says Cassian.

He tells his mother about the peace he wants, that he treasures, a peace he can only imagine because he has never truly experienced it, having spent the majority of his life in a warring galaxy. He tells his mother about the things he witnesses the Clone soldiers doing. He tells his mother about Wada, and what has happened to Wada’s family on Rodia. He tells his mother about the classmates who’ve disappeared or been killed by the Empire.

He tells his mother that he thinks everyone in the galaxy should have a voice, that there shouldn’t be one all-powerful leader, but a whole host of people who lead.

He tells his mother about blood staining his boots, just from walking in the street and not paying attention to the dark, almost gossamer puddles that flood the road.

He tells his mother about the people he’s met while working for the Rebellion, about their sympathy and kindness, and how they’ve only treated him well.

He tells his mother that he wants to be good, like them.

He tells his mother that he thinks he’s right.

His mother listens, and when he’s out of breath, she nods and reclaims his hand in the clear hot water.

“I see your seriousness, Cassi,” she says. “I do not understand it. I do not agree with it. But I see your earnestness, and that you do believe what you are doing. And that is what I want for you, more than anything. For you to have belief in something more than yourself. Something bigger.”

And Cassian is filled with a warmth that has nothing to do with the hot water, and all to do with his mother’s calm and abject honesty.

It’s acceptance. It’s compassion.

It is, in a way, and as close to the thing as possible, permission.

It’s more than he ever dared to hope for.

“I will be speaking to Nerezza about this,” says Serafima. “I do not want you doing dangerous work. Only the messages, Cassi. Can you promise me that?”

“I promise,” says Cassian.

But it’s a lie. Cassian doesn’t know it is, but Serafima does.

His mother pulls their hands from the basin, and wraps Cassian’s tightly in a ratty white towel, keeping the heat close to his skin. She unwraps her gray scarf from around her face, and presses a kiss to Cassian’s head.

“I would remind you that you do not have to do this,” she says. “I would tell you that you can back out at any time. But something tells me that you will never want to abandon this cause. Stubbornness runs in this family, but loyalty does too. And you are my son, Cassian.”

“Yes, Mama,” says Cassian.

“Before my politics, before my opinions, you are my son. Will I still be your mother, before your politics, before your opinions, before your cause?”

“Yes, Mama,” says Cassian.

Serafima smiles, but it’s a little sad. “I can only hope you will always feel that way about me. It is enough, for now.”

“You still love me? Even though we don’t agree?” Cassian asks, and his question, his bravery at asking it aloud, takes both him and Serafima aback, though for different reasons.

“Of course, Cassi,” says Serafima, eyes alarmed. “Of course. Always. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mama,” says Cassian. “I promise. Always.”

Serafima smiles, and this smile is more brilliant, more true.

“And that, is one thing I think I will always believe from you," she says.

(There is a forgiveness.)

(Because Gabriel loved Serafima, but he put the cause before her.)

(Because Serafima knows that Cassian loves her now.)

(Because Serafima knows that Cassian will, one day, choose to put the cause before her.)

(Because Serafima knows how that story ends.)

(There is a forgiveness, because she looks at her eight-year-old son, and allows it all to happen anyway.)

Cassian understands none of this, at least not then.

What he does is unwrap the white towel from his hands and re-wrap it around his mother’s, now colder, hands.

It is the closest he will ever come to thanking his mother for that forgiveness.

He runs out of the room, down the hall and to the kitchen for a snack, before he can see the way she clutches the towel to her chest, an offering, and a prayer.


	7. The Cause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is nine years old when the Rebellion gives him an order he wishes he could refuse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: discussion of deaths of children, which is rough.
> 
> (If I ever post something that you think should have had a content warning ahead of it, feel free to tell me)

Cassian is nine years old when the Rebellion gives him an order he wishes he could refuse.

The agreed-upon head of the Fest Rebellion is a woman named Travia Chan. Travia has steel gray hair that falls in harsh waves around her face, cool sand-colored skin, and piercing brown eyes curved like teardrops. She’s permanently confined to a repulsor-chair, though no one knows exactly what happened to her to cause this; rumors fly around the base suggesting Travia was paralyzed by the lightsaber of a jedi while fighting for the Separatists, that she was poisoned by Republic spies, that she fell while climbing Fest’s tallest peak. Travia herself does not speak of the repulsor-chair or her being in it very often, as it behaves almost like an extension of her, and no one can picture her without it. Cassian thinks it might even make her more compelling and intimidating. Travia has a sharp mind, a gift for strategizing, and a talent for remaining emotionless in the most desperate of situations. She has an unofficial nickname of the “Icewoman”, and on a planet covered in ice, this is a very serious and regal title indeed.

Travia’s second-in-command is a man named Sids Kon. Sids has smooth black skin and pitch black hair, as dark as what Cassian imagines deep space to look like, and he keeps it long, but not loose, as he usually wraps it in a painfully neat knot at his neck. He is significantly more charming than Travia, and more likely to speak candidly with even the most uncertain or skeptical greenhorn recruit, and Cassian warms to him when he shows up one day with hot Festian coffee for everyone on base.

Travia and Sids’ staunchly different personalities lead to frequent shouting matches in the corridors of the cobbled together main base of the Fest Rebellion in Fulcra, but when it comes to making critical life or death decisions, they somehow almost always instantly agree. This is what keeps them united, and keeps them in charge.

Cassian is nine years old, and has been a soldier for three years. He’s now a Private First Class, a ranking bestowed on him with little fanfare by Travia, in an aside when she stopped him in the corridor, but he saw the corner of her mouth turn up in a smile, and spotted Nerezza just past her shoulder, clapping her hands and winking at him, and it felt like all the celebration Cassian could ever need.

Cassian is three years younger than Nerezza was when she joined the Rebellion and saw battle, but he’s already seen almost as much battle as his sister.

He doesn’t lead squads or patrols, but he’s frequently a part of them, sometimes coming straight to base from school in order to maximize his time in the field, carefully watching the leaders and captains, copying their stances and their soft footsteps, and learning how to make himself indispensable to them.

The Age of the Empire is well-upon them, and the effects are being felt far across Fest, and not just in the capital city. Civil war has shaken the planet, with neighbors drawing clear lines among themselves, carving up the world and creating sectors that specifically support the Empire, and ones that specifically support the chaotic but strong Rebellion. And at the core of these fights is phrik; the supermetal, nearly indestructible, and impervious to even the lightsabers of the jedi.

The jedi are, of course, at this point no longer a concern.

Cassian is a little unclear on who the jedi were, and what has happened to them. His father had loathed the jedi, for they fought on the side of the Republic, step by step with the clone army he had protested so fiercely. And Cassian had agreed with his father on most things, more or less, and so had hated the jedi as well without fully understanding why or even really committing to his hate.

(Later, in seventeen years, when Cassian meets the man who will be the closest thing to a jedi he will ever encounter, Cassian will realize his father’s hatred of the jedi most likely stemmed from his inability to understand them, and that his father had probably actually just been afraid of them, and struggling with the irrational fear that grows from that kind of disbelief.)

Cassian knows the jedi were great warriors, with hot lightsticks that could just as easily cut him in two as his boots slide into snow, and that the jedi believed in the all-powerful force; but these are all just words. “Force” is used as an interchangeable swear word, running the spectrum from casual discomfort to hostile fury. And Cassian has no use for something he cannot interact with, or control. He does his best, then, to not think of the jedi.

But phrik, impervious to jedi lightsabers, inevitably reminds him of the jedi.

Phrik is Fest’s most valuable export, but they have precious little of it compared to other planets, and so the Republic, and then the Empire, and the Separatists, and then the Rebellion, don’t fight as hard to secure it on the ice planet. This leaves the people of Fest to fight each other for the supermetal, to either sell it to the highest bidder or send it on to their chosen cause.

Nerezza shows Cassian a tiny bit of phrik one day, so he has an idea of what it looks like, should he stumble across a new cache of it accidentally.

It doesn’t look like much, for how many battles are fought over it. Like everything else on Fest, save the people, phrik is gray. It’s definitely hard, and surprisingly heavy for its size, and a little shiny at places, but to Cassian, it might as well just be a piece of dirty frozen ice. He turns it over in his hands dutifully, as Nerezza watches.

“What do we do with it?” Cassian asks her.

She knows what he means. “The Rebellion builds weapons with it,” says Nerezza. “The strongest, most deadly and efficient weapons in the galaxy.”

(One day, seventeen years from this moment, Cassian will know of a weapon that will deserve that description more than phrik.)

(But he doesn’t know that now, and so he nods, and gives the piece back dismissively.)

(Phrik will not be the weapon that causes his death.)

When Cassian is nine years old, the Fest Rebellion is focused, more or less, on procuring more phrik than their Empire counterparts. This leads to battles in the streets, and bombings in large mines, deaths that number by the tens and then the hundreds and then one mine collapse leaves 1,028 Festians suffocated dead. Cassian participates in firefights, sneaks into phrik warehouses in the dead of night to squirrel away shipments in the fastest speeders the Rebellion has.

He’s still quite small, and so he’s usually the one who sneaks into buildings via exhaust vents, carefully shuffling his way through pipes until he can drop down into rooms below and let his fellow rebels inside the buildings.

When he was six years old, his small stature had been a joke among the rebels. Now, it is an asset.

This is what inspires Travia Chan and Sids Kon to call him in for a meeting one day.

Cassian is quite excited when he hears. He knows he’s a valuable recruit for the Rebellion, that he works hard, that he’s been practicing shooting with Nerezza and hand-to-hand combat with Wada, and it shows. He considers the possibilities, and comes to the conclusion that Travia and Sids have a special mission for him, maybe his first solo one.

He isn’t wrong.

The nature of the mission, however, is unexpected.

They want him to recruit for them.

On Fest. In Fulcra.

They want him to recruit children.

Like himself.

Children as young as six years old (“We think this is a good cut-off age, we don’t want to go younger than you were,” says Travia so nonchalantly, so tonelessly, like this is okay, like any of this is okay.) They think Cassian, a child himself, will be more adept at getting their cause and message out, at convincing the children who are also his peers, and his friends, to enlist and fight for the Rebellion, than any seasoned adult veteran.

For the first time, Cassian is given an order and balks.

He opens his mouth, to demand what, he can’t know or articulate. All he feels is a deep sense of uneasiness, and a bone-achingly rough bout of what grows to become depression.

He thinks, _I can’t do this_.

Cassian is nine years old.

He has fought for a third of his life. He has very few memories of his life before the Rebellion, when his father still lived, when his mother smiled, when his brother looked at him with anything other than disinterest, when his sister spent her spare time teaching him how to ice climb and not teaching him how to kill people.

His life did not start with the Rebellion, but he realizes then, at nine years old, it will undoubtedly end with the Rebellion.

(He will be right, of course.)

Cassian is a child, and is still learning about himself and who he is and where he fits into an uncaring and war-torn universe, but somehow knows even then that his life and his soul belongs to the Rebellion. To the fight. To this cause, and these people.

What he says is, “Yes ma’am, yes sir, I’ll start right away.”

Travia and Sids smile and nod, unaware of the reality of the child standing before them.

Cassian begins with other nine year olds, because he knows them the best, and he wants to start with people he considers friends; in this way, he will only better his pitch before he moves onto strangers. His initial attempts are poor; Cassian is almost a zealot in his devotion, the kind of thing that happens to anyone who is practically born into a cause. He gets laughed at the first few tries, until he thinks of how his superiors in the Rebellion operate, their inherent authority and effortless charm. Then he hones his mimicry skills, and takes a new shot at a new personality that is a composite sketch of everyone he has ever admired.

He takes Wada’s genteel laugh, his street smarts, his swagger. He takes Travia’s militarism, her strategizing, her cool composure. He takes Sids’ natural likeability, his thoughtfulness, his approachability.

He takes these pieces of them, and then he adds intimacy.

He becomes Nerezza, her stubbornness, her recklessness, her fire. He becomes his mother, her regality, her kindness, her empathy. He becomes his father, his stoicism, his brilliance, his natural spirit of camaraderie.

He changes.

He takes them on, and he somehow becomes his own person.

He’s Cassian Andor, he’s nine years old, and he’s a well-regarded and influential recruiter for the Rebellion.

He’s well-liked among the children, and Cassian, who has never been a big brother, and is not even the oldest or the biggest of the kids he recruits, somehow becomes a defacto one for the fifty-three children eager for his approval. He learns all their names, and teaches them as best he can, passing on the practical lessons from Nerezza and Wada, and even Zeferino’s cooking skills and general self-care knowledge. He is near beloved among the children, who cling to his sad origin story with the enthusiasm that comes with someone whose own story is only one step behind.

Cassian still runs the occasional message (usually messages of the top secret, critical must-get-there-now variety) but most of the message running is done nowadays by recruits that are near the age he was when he started. What began as Cassian’s desperate attempt to make himself useful has spawned into what is, more or less, a fully functioning secondary squad of dedicated children turned saboteurs. Each child soldier has strict orders to never engage with stormtroopers, to only deliver messages and then return to base, but it’s an open secret that the vast majority of the child soldiers engage in some kind of petty guerilla warfare. After all, none of them found themselves in the Rebellion by passive mistake; some kind of trauma, a great emotional upheaval, opened a door that Cassian Andor and the Rebellion forced themselves into. Even the children Cassian recruits who do not enlist make themselves helpful in other ways, as many come from Imperial-supporting families, and, well, it turns out that spies and informants come in all shapes, sizes, and ages.

And so Cassian spends less time slipping scraps of paper into battle-hardened hands, and more time scarring his own hands until they can be called battle-hardened, and guiding the hands of children who he used to resemble.

What this really means, what the big takeaway should be, is that Cassian feels each child’s death like he’s lost a sibling.

The news always trickles to Cassian slowly, because bad news seems to spread much more slowly than any good news, and because no one casually talks about a child dying. It’s sometimes three weeks after a child’s death before Cassian hears of it, and he instantly berates himself for not checking in more, for not noticing the absence.

But Cassian doesn’t work for the Rebellion full-time. He still goes to school. He still lives at home.

And he’s still nine years old.

Whenever Cassian hears of another child’s death, he crawls into the nearest small space, tucking himself in among wires and data banks and spare parts and shut-down droids, compartmentalizing his body like he can do the same for his grief. He stays in the dark, alone, for hours, until he’s called in to report or he has to leave for a mission or he has to go home before Serafima worries. The children’s deaths all hit him hard, because he knows he was the one who walked them into base, who hovered as they filled out enlistment forms, who met with them in secret in side alleys or behind gymnasiums or in cafes, who counseled and advised them to death. He feels like an omen, like a mistake, like something truly reprehensible--

Sids finds him like this one day, spotting him crouched among crates of ammunition. He slides down to the floor next to him, and doesn’t ask what’s wrong, or why he’s there. He just sits beside him, and lets him tremble and try to pull himself together.

“It’s not your fault,” he says at last.

“I bring them here,” says Cassian.

“Cassian,” Sids says, gently. “Nerezza brought you to us three years ago. If you died tomorrow, would it be your sister’s fault?”

“No,” says Cassian immediately, and he sees Sids’ sad smirk.

“We all know what we signed up for,” says Sids. “Even the youngest recruits. They know, like you knew, back when you joined us. You would have died for the Rebellion then, wouldn’t you?”

Cassian says nothing, because if he does speak, it will be to tell him that he barely knew what it meant to die when he was six years old, besides that it meant never seeing anyone you love ever again, and being buried in a gray steel box in gray dirt.

Even now, he’s not sure what else it means.

Sids grips his shoulder, offering comfort while maintaining his professionalism. When he speaks again, it is to offer Cassian a mantra:

“Everything we do, Cassian, we do for the Rebellion. It’s justified. It is not without sacrifice, but it is worth it, for the greater good of the cause.”

It is later, with Sids gone and Cassian walking back to the house and thinking of Klee, the seven-year-old girl killed by a stormtrooper in the street that led to Cassian hiding among the ammunition in grief, does Cassian reflect back on Sids’ words.

_Everything we do, we do for the Rebellion. It’s justified._

_Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion._

_I’m justified_.

He tries the words out loud, muttering them to himself as he walks.

They sound like a plea, like absolution might be found in the cold gray sky over the cold gray planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Travia Chan was an old EU character who ran the Rebellion on Fest before it was absorbed into the Alliance. She was called the Icewoman, and she did have a repulsor-chair, but beyond that, I don't know much about her. She isn't technically canon anymore, but basically nothing is, so.
> 
> Phrik, and its existence on Fest, is also an old EU thing.
> 
> Sids is someone I made up.


	8. How To Crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One day, when Cassian is nine years old, Wada turns to him and says it's time for Cassian to learn how to fly.

One day, when Cassian is nine years old, Wada turns to him and says it's time for Cassian to learn how to fly.

Cassian is, of course, absolutely delighted. He’s been in a good number of ships by now, has lingered over the controls of parked shuttles and wondered what they all do, has spent many hours staring at the sky and the stars and the brilliant beams of light that indicate ships flying among them, and dreaming of doing it all himself one day.

It is a very childish thing to dream, but Cassian is nine years old, and even if he feels that he’s responsible for the deaths of children, he is still one himself.

Wada brings Cassian to his own ship, a Rodian freighter, a sturdy black ship scarred over by blaster marks and dents from transport fiascos. The ship is bulky, and boxy, and Cassian tries not to look at it with too much distaste, but fails. Wada cackles with mirth.

“Why do you think you’re learning to fly this ship, Cassi?”

“Because it’s yours,” says Cassian.

“Yes, and?”

Cassian shrugs, as Wada unlocks the ship and they walk inside. Wada has emptied the ship entirely, and it’s easy for them to pick their way to the cockpit.

“Because the first thing you must learn to do is crash,” says Wada.

When it comes to piloting, Wada has a simple, two-pronged philosophy.

First: he believes every rebel should learn how to pilot, because having multiple escape route options is essential to survival. And he figures Cassian has been a rebel for long enough that he ought to begin to learn how to escape. (There’s a slight caveat here where Wada adds that Cassian has grown three inches in the last year, which allows him to reach all the buttons and knobs he needs to reach to be able to pilot Wada’s freighter.)

Second: the first thing one has to learn to do before learning to fly is to learn how to crash. Because every wanted man has had to crash his transport at some point or another, and the key to crashing is to survive it, and to walk away from it, and to live to fight another day. Wada believes crashing can be taught, just as shooting and hand-to-hand combat can be taught.

“Crashing is an art,” says Wada.

Cassian is skeptical, but here is a seasoned pilot willing to teach him how to fly, and so he doesn’t argue.

Wada directs him to buckle in first, because the stupidest way any pilot or passenger can die is by not being buckled in. (“There is no glory in that,” he lectures Cassian.) He then directs him to pick up his headset, and shows Cassian how most headsets adjust and what to do if the ship is designed for creatures whose heads are much bigger than Cassian’s. (“Communication is life or death when it comes to flying,” says Wada. “It means knowing where to land, or where not to land.”)

He carefully and patiently walks Cassian through the pre-flight checklist, through how to turn the ship on, through how to manually operate the landing gear. With each step he offers personal insight and experience on how other kinds of ships operate, even giving Cassian tips on how Imperial ships work, without elaborating on how or where he came across this information.

He adjusts the way Cassian clutches the steering, keeps a hand locked on Cassian’s shoulder so he sits up straight, shows him which way to turn his head to look out the side windows and the blind spots. He answers all of Cassian’s questions with thought and clarification, and even promises to inquire elsewhere when Cassian comes up with a question he can’t answer.

“Flying is fun,” he tells Cassian, as the boy demonstrates the steps needed to jump to hyperspace while still sitting with the ship powered down in the hangar. “But never forget that you are locked inside a hunk of metal, hurtling through suffocating space that will freeze your heart and break you into a million pieces. Flying means respect and hard work.”

And he teaches Cassian how to crash.

He demonstrates bracing technique, points out the safest spots to be in when a ship is coming in hard. He describes the protocol needed to survive a water landing, a swamp landing, a sand landing, a dense forest landing, a storm landing, and of course, an ice landing for planets like Fest. He points out where the first aid and emergency kit is kept on the ship, advising Cassian on where most ships keep theirs, and sternly telling Cassian to never fly on a ship as passenger or pilot without first knowing where the first aid and emergency kit is.

“Always expect the worst, because the worst seems to frequently happen to people like us,” says Wada.

Wada describes the best angles for a hard landing, which parts of which ships seem to be the most durable, where to put the crew and passengers in the event of a crash. He rattles off a list of distress signals and frequencies, and coaches Cassian through them until he’s committed each to memory.

He teaches Cassian quick and dirty immediate repairs. How to take apart non-essential parts of the ship, like heating and some electricity, and how to reroute the pieces and energy to more essential parts. How to patch breaches in the main cabin, and how to quickly replace a glass windshield while lost deep in space. He has Cassian tell him what his instincts are in each survival scenario, what the first thing he’d do would be, and then debunks each and corrects Cassian with what the right thing to do is, how to maximize his odds of survival.

“You’re a rebel,” says Wada. “Your survival odds are already bantha fodder. Don’t go making things worse for yourself.”

A month after Cassian first steps foot into Wada’s ship, he takes off for the first time.

Wada doesn’t say a word, letting (and making) Cassian take charge by himself. He follows Cassian’s direction without comment, disengaging and starting and switching without so much as a glance towards Cassian, and Cassian decides Wada would definitely say something if he was about to commit a catastrophic error that could destroy his own ship.

He doesn’t find out, because while Cassian does not commit a catastrophic error, he does forget one step, and a cooling vent catches fire in the main cabin.

As far as first flight mistakes go, Wada says it’s a minimal one.

“Still in one piece,” he says, and Cassian is offended at the slight surprise in Wada’s voice. “I must be a good teacher.”

“Or I’m a good pilot?” Cassian suggests.

Wada laughs. “I think you are a natural at many things, Cassi, but piloting? You don’t have the patience for it.” He pauses and adds, “But you are a good listener, and quick learner. You internalize everything anyone ever says to you. You will be a perfectly fine pilot.”

Cassian flies.

It feels like, well, flying.

It also feels like hope.

Hope that Cassian can leave the cold ice of Fest, can see worlds bursting with color and warmth. Hope that Cassian can explore and travel and meet new people and see new sights and creatures. Hope that there is more for Cassian in the universe than monochromes, than a gray that seeps from the outside into his very bones, burrowing and coalescing in his blood.

Hope that his destiny does not lie buried in an unforgiving gray earth, but among the stars.

Wada sits quietly as Cassian cautiously flies them over Fulcra, sits quietly when he lets Cassian take them further into Fest, over the abysses of Fest’s valleys, the heights of its ice-enclosed mountains.

Weeks after Cassian first flies, Wada tells him to pick a planet for them to visit, on this side of the Outer Rim, so Cassian can fly with a hyperdrive for the first time.

“Is Rodia too far?” Cassian asks, and though Wada will never tell him, the question is what cements in Wada that he has chosen well in proteges. But yes, Rodia is too far for this.

The two of them sit down, with Wada’s map of the galaxy, and look at possibilities. Wada isn’t too keen on visiting any Imperial strongholds, which knocks off a good number of planets from the map, and also isn’t too interested in taking nine-year-old Cassian further into space than is necessary.

They settle on Garqi, which isn’t too far from the Atrivis Sector, where Fest is located. It’s much closer to Wild Space, but still within the parameters of the Outer Rim. Plus, Wada has visited the planet before, and has a feeling Cassian will enjoy it.

He sits back in the co-pilot’s seat as Cassian readies them for the jump to hyperspace. He relaxes as Cassian completes the jump flawlessly, and laughs at the way Cassian’s eyes go big as space zips past them.

“This is _flying_ ,” says Cassian, and Wada agrees.

Cassian reacts to Garqi exactly as Wada had predicted. Garqi is famous for its rainforests, its oceans, its plains and rivers, meaning it is almost the polar opposite of Fest in every way. The planet appears to be purple from space, due to the natural native life that dominates the planet. It is lush and healthy, and Cassian barely remembers the proper steps for landing in his haste to disembark and touch trees and leaves for the first time.

He is absolutely transfixed, and Wada struggles to keep Cassian within his sights at all times, so eager is the boy to disappear into the grassy undergrowth.

Green is the other dominant color on the planet, a green that is somehow even richer than Wada’s scaly Rodian skin, but even more colors are plentiful as well. Cassian spies pink and red flowers, nibbles on wild yellow fruit once Wada verifies it isn’t poisonous, and brushes his hands over the tall purple plants that creep in every direction. He’s even transfixed by colors he encounters on Fest, such as blue. But Garqi’s huge blue rivers are more beautiful than any Cassian has ever seen on Fest.

He resists the urge to strip and jump into the water, but only just. The novelty of running around in sunlight, without his coat and gloves, is enough.

He does yank his boots and socks off, and wiggles his toes in the grass.

Wada, for his part, is content to let Cassian gambol about. He camps out in the shade and sends a few messages to his sparse Garqian contacts, checking in. Garqi is currently under the control of the Empire, more so than Fest, but there are rumors of rebels on the planet nonetheless.

Cassian, selfishly, wishes even the Rebellion would stay away. The planet seems too pretty to be marred by development and war in any way.

Wada allows Cassian to wander for hours, until he tells him they have to head back to Fest, or else Nerezza will be unable to excuse Cassian’s absence from his mother.

They return to the ship, with Cassian carrying handfuls of green grass and purple flowers to show to Nerezza at home.

As Cassian guides them through hyperspace, Wada presses some of the purple flowers into thin paper, preserving them for Cassian to always have.

Cassian is nine years old.

Wada looks at him and wishes there was a way he could preserve this version of Cassian, carefree, the war and the Rebellion all but totally forgotten.

He has taught Cassian how to survive crash-landing a ship, but is unsure how to teach him how to survive other kinds of crashes.

These are the kinds of things, Wada knows, he can only learn on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Descriptions of Garqi come from Wookiepedia, and are technically not canon anymore. But again, this entire story is ~canon~, so.


	9. The Last Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian’s tenth birthday is the last good day of his childhood.

Cassian’s tenth birthday is the last good day of his childhood.

Nerezza makes sure neither she nor Cassian are expected at base or to be running a mission on the day of, and instead they plan for a day of ice boarding and ice climbing and probably an epic snowball fight or two. Nerezza is sixteen years old, over a head taller than Cassian, and shaping herself into a future as a key figure in not just the Fest Rebellion, but the burgeoning, broader Rebellion that is slowly creeping across the galaxy, with rumors suggesting there are even supporters in the Imperial Senate itself. The whispers fill the Fest Rebellion with hope, and the rebels cling to it, for anything that suggests the dangerous and damaging work they are conducting in the name of resistance is both worth it and actually helping a grander organization.

On the morning of Cassian’s tenth birthday, he and Nerezza are tugging on their ice-boarding boots when Zeferino approaches them, his own ice-boarding boots in hand.

Zeferino is fourteen years old, and has distanced himself from his siblings in the past few years, leaving a small crater in Cassian’s family life. His brother has gotten involved with civilian Imperial sympathizers in Fulcra, but Cassian is pretty sure he isn’t on any front lines like Cassian and Nerezza are. Zeferino is smart, and clever, but he does not share the blazing hatred that seems to burn in Cassian and Nerezza.

Zeferino functions then to Cassian and Nerezza as a somewhat concerned roommate, more or less. He still gets on Cassian’s case about schoolwork, tries to keep tabs on where Cassian is as best he can, can usually be relied on to teach Cassian a new recipe once a month or so. Cassian knows all this means Zeferino cares, but it’s hard to believe and accept when Zeferino is still so cool towards him, when his brother has such starkly different fundamental beliefs than Cassian.

But on Cassian’s tenth birthday, Zeferino goes ice-boarding with Cassian and Nerezza, and it’s like they’ve never been far from each other, as the three of them slip back into their old dynamic and banter.

They tug each other out of snow drifts following epic crashes, and warn each other against hidden patches of misty ice and gray rock. They dare each other into dipping down steep cliffs, and create a chain of linked hands to navigate uncertain terrain. Zeferino accidentally falls off the side of a hill, and Nerezza wastes no time in leaning over the side to pull him back up. Cassian loses his board in a deep trench of fresh snow, and Zeferino dives into the pile to find it, emerging with icicles forming in his hair and the board clutched in his black-gloved hands.

They laugh and tell jokes and even reminisce about their father playing in the snow with them, and Cassian thinks this day could go on forever and he would be satisfied.

When the sun begins to set, they trudge home, linked arm in arm, Cassian in the middle like countless times before, and Cassian sees Nerezza and Zeferino smile at each other, and he thinks, for the first time, that peace in the galaxy might actually be possible.

They’re greeted at home by Serafima, who grins at the sight of her three elated and exhausted children, taking care to hug Nerezza and Zeferino before pulling Cassian in for an even tighter one, pressing a kiss to his head and wishing him a happy birthday.

Serafima has taken the night off from her waitressing job, and has made Festian cream cake, complete with a fire-burned topping. She brings the plate out to Cassian, and Nerezza and Zeferino cheekily sing to him, toasting him with hopes of a year filled with personal triumph and warm celebration.

The four of them eat the cake in front of the fireplace, with Serafima sacrificing more fire starter than she normally would, to prolong their celebrations and family bonding. She’s aware of how fractured their little family has become in the years since Gabriel died (and, if she’s being honest, even in the year or two before he died) and she’s determined to capitalize on the sweet camaraderie that the youngest child hitting double digits has brought on the family.

After they’ve eaten the cake (the entire thing, with Nerezza and Zeferino scooping up handfuls of leftover cream and throwing it at each other and Cassian, and Serafima too happy at the sight to properly reprimand them), Serafima turns on the ancient and cracked music player and plays music from her home world of Sernpidal, the music she grew up with and danced to.

To Cassian, she says, “Cassi, I will teach you how to dance.”

She knows that Cassian has been learning how to survive, with Zeferino teaching him how to make food and patch his clothes, and Nerezza teaching him battle skills including shooting and hand-to-hand combat, and whatever else he might be learning with the Rebellion. (Truthfully, she is sure she doesn’t want to know specifics, certain it will only upset her.) But she wants her son to learn things that aren’t necessary for him to know, but things that might make him laugh or smile, like dancing.

Cassian is ten years old, and he loves his mother, and so he agrees.

He takes her hand, and she directs him in how to move his feet first, standing next to him and making him follow her steps, something he has spent his entire life trying to do.

Cassian has grown up with neighbors and family friends telling him that they hope he will have inherited his mother’s grace, and it seems their wishes will be rewarded after all, if his mother has anything to say about it.

Nerezza and Zeferino are far clumsier, but they also aren’t as eager to please their mother as Cassian is. Instead, they giggle and snort their way through the movements, leaning on each other. Zeferino is a few inches shorter than his big sister, but in this moment, they almost look like twins, with their matching elation and grins. They stand close together and laugh, the war and its divisions lost between them.

Cassian is so warm, warm with the fire in the room and his family close to him, and learns to dance with his mother.

“I am proud of you, Cassi,” Serafima says, ducking down a little so Cassian can twirl her.

Cassian looks up at his mother’s big brown eyes, the eyes he inherited, and sees the clear affection and devotion in them, and suspects she might not be talking only of Cassian’s newly acquired understanding of dancing, but of his other, more time-consuming work.

“Thanks, Mama,” says Cassian.

Nerezza and Zeferino are sprawled in front of the fireplace, tired out from the ice-boarding and their own exuberant dancing, and instead are watching a swoop race broadcast from Corellia. Their heads are close together, and they’re murmuring bets and predictions to each other, eyes locked on the fast-moving machines racing on the other side of the galaxy. 

“My brave boy,” says Serafima, kneeling on the floor and touching Cassian’s face. She’s taken off the white shawl she wore outside today, and her curly dark hair is tied up at the back of her head, ringlets falling into her eyes.

“You are so good, Cassi,” she says.

“You are too, Mama,” says Cassian, because he doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“I have tried to be,” she says. “I know I haven’t been around as much as I should be, and I hope you can forgive me for it.”

“Of course, Mama,” says Cassian, bewildered as to why Serafima feels like she needs to apologize for working so much to keep Cassian and his siblings sheltered and fed, with Gabriel long dead and Serafima on her own.

“I have so much hope for your future,” says Serafima. “I cannot wait to see all the things you do. You will be great, Cassi.”

“Yes, Mama,” says Cassian, and for the moment, he is also filled with hope, and it grows like a vine in his chest, hope that he will please her, make her proud to call him her son, always.

Serafima kisses both of Cassian’s cheeks, and he laughs, half-pushing her away. She squawks indignantly, reminding him that he may be ten years old now, but he is still her baby, and she will kiss him whenever she likes.

“As are you two,” Serafima adds, and turns to Nerezza and Zeferino on the floor, wrapping them up in her arms, causing them to shriek and laugh with surprise, feigning disgust before letting their mother kiss them both, run her hands through their hair, touch their faces.

“I am so proud of each of you,” she says, and Cassian sees that these words affect his siblings just as they affected him, with Nerezza beaming and Zeferino blushing.

“I hope we can celebrate all birthdays, just like this,” says Serafima.

It’s a good, quiet, well-meaning hope. It is a hope that does not come to be rewarded.

Cassian’s tenth birthday is the last full day of Serafima’s life. 


	10. Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serafima Andor is shot outside the market near her home that she frequented, hit by a red blast of light, falling to the blazingly white snow and cold gray ice, dead even before she hits the ground, killed in full view of her ten-year-old son.

Serafima Andor is shot outside the market near her home that she frequented, hit by a red blast of light, falling to the blazingly white snow and cold gray ice, dead even before she hits the ground, killed in full view of her ten-year-old son.

Zeferino had provided Serafima with a list of groceries he’d like in order to make the house meals for the next few days, as Nerezza is planning on a trip to a neighboring city for the Rebellion and won’t be around much, and Serafima is planning to spend most of the next few days in her studio, catching up on orders. Zeferino doesn’t complain about cooking, but prefers to not do the shopping himself. Cassian usually goes by himself to do it, but Serafima decides to go to the market with him, as it’s an unusually sunny day on Fest, and temperatures are warmer than normal.

She pulls on a light knit dress and winds a brilliant white scarf around her head and shoulders as Cassian hovers by the door, tugging on his coat. He watches as she kisses Zeferino’s head, and he watches his brother’s shrugging wave as Cassian and Serafima leave the house.

Nerezza has already left for the Fest Rebellion base earlier that morning.

Serafima and Cassian choose to walk to the market rather than take a transport, because the weather is so unusually pleasant, and because they don’t often spend time together, just the two of them. Cassian is still on a high from his birthday the day before, where his family ended the night by gifting him a new toy x-wing fighter, and he was awake for most of the night carefully putting it together.

He thinks it was Nerezza’s idea, the plane, as she is (or should be) the only member of Cassian’s family to know he’s learned to pilot in the last year.

Serafima listens patiently as Cassian chatters on and on about his plans for the x-wing figure, his ideas for great trips it can take around the house and backyard. She nods at the right places, asks a pertinent question or two, but mostly listens in content silence, holding Cassian’s hand and swinging their arms together, refusing to let him pull away when he threatens to, ignoring his mutterings about how ten is too old to be holding his mother’s hand still.

(After she is dead, he will be grateful for her insistence in this moment.)

They reach the market at noon, and it’s packed with customers.

Cassian follows Serafima through the booths and stands. He’s ten years old, and he also thinks ten is too old to be holding on to the edges of his mother’s scarf so as not to lose her in the crowds. He settles for paying attention to her movements instead, mirroring her and hanging by her side. With this in mind, Serafima walks a little slower than normal, for her legs are still longer than Cassian’s, though she knows in a few years this will no longer be the case.

(She will not live to see the day Cassian is taller than her.)

They finish their shopping, and with their arms heavy and loaded with bags of food and ingredients, exit the main entrance of the market.

Cassian lingers a little bit behind Serafima, so as to not appear too desperate to be close to her. He is ten years old, he thinks he’s so close to being grown up.

He’s not. He’s really not.

In the dim flinty gray sunlight, he spots the Imperial Walker stalking down the street, but they are so commonplace now, more or less, that it barely registers as an actual threat. The squad of stormtroopers shuffling alongside it, same thing.

The streets around the market are quite busy, and it will only be later, much later, that Cassian reflects and realizes they were surrounded on all sides by rebels and Imperial sympathizers, all dressed as civilians.

Snow fell the night before, and the freshest layer still coats the road, pristinely white.

A firefight breaks out, shattering the scene.

There are explosions, grenades tossed out of windows and onto the street. There are screams, as people on both sides fall in a haze of blaster color and holes singed in skin. There are blasts, as rifles and guns are locked and loaded and directed into the crowds.

Serafima drops the bags she’s carrying. She turns to Cassian, a few feet behind her, and extends her hand towards him, gathering her skirt in her other hand, ready to run. Cassian looks at his mother, takes in her parted mouth, her wide and terrified brown eyes, a lone curl falling over her face.

Cassian is looking at his mother when she’s shot.

The light hits her in the chest, directly over her heart. It looks too clean, too precise to be an accidental shot, but security camera footage that Cassian makes himself watch later will prove it came from an Imperial stormtrooper who was firing into the crowd at will, thinking he would hit a rebel or two.

The shot burns through her white shawl, and almost instantly blossoms into brilliant red, a stain that spreads like ice over a pond in winter, spiraling and annihilating. Her legs buckle immediately, and she crumples to the gray sidewalk in a heap, landing with her legs splayed at a wrong angle, the arm she’d extended towards her son still reaching for him.

It’s that image, his mother lying in the street like trash, that spurs Cassian into action.

He leaps over his own discarded bags and slams to his knees next to Serafima, grabbing his mother’s shoulders and shaking her roughly. Her brown eyes ( _his eyes, this could’ve been him, he could’ve been shot in the street and killed, why was it not him, why is he alive_ ) are still open, but completely lifeless, staring up at a strangely clear gray sky.

“Mama,” Cassian says. His voice is firm, almost stunningly so.

It’s shock.

He’s seen it before. He remembers watching his father die, on the other side of the galaxy.

But this was right in front of him, feet away.

 _Why is he alive_.

From a great distance, somewhere in Cassian’s mind where his rationality still functions, comes the awareness that Serafima is dead. It picks at him, scratching at his skull, trying to get to his eyes, to make Cassian see that she is not breathing, that the brilliant red blood has stopped pumping from her chest, that the snow around them is still clean because Serafima didn’t bleed out, because a bullet stopped her heart before it could expel any additional blood, because she is _dead_.

Cassian stares at his mother and tries to understand he is looking at a corpse, a body where his mother used to live, a body she used to teach him how to dance just the night before, a body she used to hug him, to hold his hand, to pick him up, to carry him.

 _She’s gone_ , Cassian’s brain whispers to him.

“Mama,” Cassian whispers out loud, again, but it is a defeated whisper, recognizant of the coldness that is creeping into the core of him.

He will not leave her here to rot, to be run over by stormtroopers or rebels, to be trampled on to the point of disfigurement and mutilation.

He grasps his mother’s shoulders, scrambles to his feet, and heaves her up. It is not a gentle move, but it is a kind one, where Cassian drags his mother back into the market they had only just left, pulling her behind a stand and crouching in a bit of thankfully dry gray concrete, the firefight happening in the street behind them and in the market around them, sending bursts of color over Cassian’s head to hit support beams and shake the whole building.

Cassian tugs his mother’s torso into his lap. Her eyes stare up at him, and he stares back, until he’s sure his eyes match hers again, both in color and liveliness.

They stay like that for a long time.

He thinks this is where he will die, alongside his mother, and thinks that wouldn’t be so bad.

Cassian knows he should leave her here, now that she’s out of the way, and help the rebels fight off the stormtroopers and Imperial sympathizers. He could find a blaster, easily, and take out a handful. But he finds he can’t move. He can’t leave his mother here, alone.

He leans against the wall, grasping his mother’s cold hand, until her body begins to tense, and her eyes begin to sink back into her skull a little. He holds her hand until long after the blasters have stopped shooting, long after the participants have fled the scene of the massacre, long after the building has stopped rumbling around them.

It is Zeferino and Nerezza who find them.

Undoubtedly bewildered and concerned over how a simple trip to the market has turned into an entire day-long excursion, Zeferino left the house and began making his way to the market. He passed by a couple running in the opposite direction of the market, and overheard a few disjointed sentences from them, piecing together enough information to begin to run himself, this time towards the market.

Nerezza was at the base when the news of the market attack came in. She stayed behind to coordinate, as it was decided she was too valuable for such a random, non-essential public battle, and instead had to wait until the fight was over before she could leave. She literally ran into Zeferino, who gripped her by the wrist and told her Serafima and Cassian had gone to the market that morning, and he had not seen them since.

The two siblings sprint, side by side, with their paces matched, to the market, expecting to find the very worst.

They reach the snow-covered streets around the market, finding that the snow has been stained dark red and rusty brown, and that bodies litter the roads. They tread cautiously, turning over corpses and asking if anyone has seen a forty-seven-year-old woman and a ten-year-old boy, if they’ve been injured and taken to a medical bay, or evacuated to a safer location.

They walk into the market and find straggles of survivors, nursing blaster wounds, cradling broken and damaged limbs, staring into space.

It is almost perversely quiet.

Zeferino happens to glance over the side of a kebroot stand, and sees Cassian cradling Serafima’s corpse.

There is nothing to say. Zeferino and Nerezza kneel beside their family in silent shock. Nerezza grabs Cassian’s face, turning his head, forcing him to look at her, and finds only cold darkness. Zeferino knows there’s no point but still presses his hand to Serafima’s yellowing neck, looking for a pulse.

“Cassi,” Nerezza says, shaking her brother’s head. “Cassi, Cassi, _Cassi_. Cassian.”

Cassian does not speak, does not respond.

Nerezza slaps him. Hard.

It does the trick. Cassian snaps out of his grief-induced trance. Instantly, his eyes fill with tears, which overflow and slide down his ashen face, failing to wipe away the gray hue from his cheeks.

“Mama’s dead, Ezza,” he says.

Cassian is ten years old, but he sounds like he’s six again. It turns out that losing one parent does not prepare you for losing the other.

Nerezza yanks down the sheet that covers the stand’s counter and carefully wraps her mother’s body inside it. Cassian sobs, almost in relief, when he can no longer see Serafima.

Zeferino gets to his feet and walks outside, flagging down a transport. Convincing the driver to transport a sheet-covered corpse costs them quite a bit extra, but Fulcra has been torn apart by war and this won’t be the first dead body the driver has had in his transport, and the Andor siblings are entirely lost and despondent and just want to go home.

The drive home is as silent and cold as the tomb the transport has become.

Zeferino organizes a small funeral. He takes it on himself to tell Serafima’s boss at the Bothan food place that she’s dead; the man is sympathetic and somber, and completely surprises Zeferino by shoving another month’s worth of what Serafima would’ve earned into his hands. Zeferino then gets in touch with the customers waiting for orders from Serafima’s pottery work, and sends out the ones she’d finished, and tries to return the money for orders she’d never gotten to complete. The vast majority of the customers, upon hearing she has died, leaving behind three children, refuse the refunds.

Fest is a gray and cold planet, but the people are not.

The mourners converge on the Andor house for the funeral. It somehow seems sadder than Gabriel’s, and Cassian decides it’s because Gabriel had his death coming, more or less, by being so outspoken and dangerous, and Serafima didn’t. Her death is officially certified as a result of getting caught in the crossfire of a battle between the Empire and a band of rebels. This is actually the case, is actually exactly what happened, but it still feels hollow and incorrect to Cassian.

He realizes it’s because he cannot believe that his mother, someone so decisive and smart and thoughtful, could die so randomly.

He is trying to find reason in war, and no such thing exists.

The mourners hug him, grip his shoulder, apologize over and over again to him and Nerezza and Zeferino, and no Andor knows what to do with their sympathy and pity. When Gabriel died, they had Serafima to cling to, for guidance and comfort. She knew what would happen next.

They don’t.

They know they can’t hang on to the house. They can’t afford the rent. Nerezza and Zeferino together might be able to work enough to keep it, but it would mean Zeferino would have to drop out of school, and he’s reluctant, and Nerezza doesn’t want to force him.

Nerezza decided to leave school the second she saw Cassian clinging onto their dead mother.

Nerezza gathers herself together, puts on her nicest pants and coat, and heads to the Judicial District of Fulcra to petition to formally adopt her brothers. She’s sixteen, technically of legal age on Fest, but she has no income and no official work or job prospects aside from her work in the Rebellion, and not a dime to her name save the meager inheritance Serafima has left for her. But Nerezza marches into the tall white stone building with her head high, determined to fight tooth and nail to keep Zeferino and Cassian with her.

She thinks of how Serafima took on the Republic in an effort to get Gabriel’s ashes returned to the family on Fest, and does her best to channel that righteous energy.

Almost everyone tells Nerezza that she looks just like her mother, but in that moment, she could _be_ her mother.

As it turns out, Nerezza only has to open her mouth and plainly ask for custody. She’s immediately granted it.

War has been breaking Fest for years, and the government is overloaded with orphans who have nowhere to go. A young woman, of age, asking to keep her brothers, is an optimal situation. The courts and system are not eager to add two traumatized boys to their overburdened facilities.

But they still can’t keep the house. The solution is, to Nerezza, obvious.

She wants them to move into the rebel base in Fulcra, full-time.

But she knows Zeferino won’t go, and that Travia and Sids will most likely refuse to take him in, having heard from Nerezza that he supports the Empire, and so she goes back to the drawing board, searching for the cheapest one-bedroom apartments in the city.

Zeferino takes this issue out of her hands. He finds his own space: he enlists in Imperial Intelligence.

The Imperial Intelligence branch is under the umbrella of the Imperial Military, and usually only takes recruits who’ve already served in the Imperial Army or Navy. But Zeferino’s test scores, following tests he took in secret in Fulcra without telling any member of his family, were considered exceptional, so he’s invited into the elite fold as a brand new recruit.

He is expected to report to the Imperial Center on Coruscant in fourteen days’ time.

Nerezza blows a gasket.

Cassian hides in the attic of their soon-to-be-vacant house, humming to himself, humming the songs from Sernpidal that Serafima loved, and tries to block out the sounds of his siblings screaming at each other.

Nerezza tells Zeferino that he is abandoning them.

Zeferino tells Nerezza that she was planning on leaving him behind, anyway, with her and Cassian bound for the rebel base someday, which he expects to be sooner rather than later.

Nerezza says there’s a big difference in living in different parts of the same city than moving across the galaxy, into the Core Region.

Zeferino says there really isn’t that much of a difference, that Cassian and Nerezza moving into the rebel base means they are going somewhere he can’t follow.

“We were never going to see each other again anyway,” says Zeferino, and Nerezza's voice fails her.

Losing Gabriel was an injuring blow to them, but it seems losing Serafima is the fatal one.

Nerezza cannot come up with an argument to convince Zeferino to stay. She leaves the house in a furious and sobbing huff, slamming the door.

Zeferino finds Cassian in the dark attic.

He sits beside him.

“I know you don’t understand me,” says Zeferino. “But I also know you try to, anyway.”

“I don’t want you to go, Zef,” says Cassian.

“I’m not leaving to get away from you,” says Zeferino. “I’m leaving because my path is different than yours, Cassi. I think you’re going to see that too, sooner rather than later.”

Cassian nods, numb. He’s been numb since he watched Serafima’s heart burst in a bright flash of red blood.

“I don’t know when we’ll see each other again,” says Zeferino. “I might get leave, or furlough time, and I’ll try to come back to Fest, all right? And maybe you’ll still want to see me.”

“Of course I will,” says Cassian.

Zeferino smiles, but it’s sad. “We’ll see. I won’t hold you to it, okay? Just know that, for me… You’re always going to be my little brother, yeah? Always. I promise.”

“You’ll always be my brother too,” says Cassian, because Zeferino is his brother, is one of only two remaining family members Cassian has left, and he can’t imagine ever denying him as blood.

(He will.)

“You’ll be okay, Cassi,” says Zeferino. “Stick with Nerezza, all right? She and I… we have our issues, but we put you first, okay? And if you’re ever in Coruscant, come find me.”

(He won’t.)

Later, Cassian will look back on this conversation and realize Zeferino fully believed he would never see Cassian again, that this was his way of saying goodbye without saying the actual words. At the time, Cassian is ten years old, and thinks of how he’ll miss his brother, of how much his brother looks like their long-dead father, how Cassian and Zeferino look almost identical from the back because of this, and he’ll wonder if one day he’ll be as tall as Zeferino and their father.

Zeferino kisses Cassian’s forehead, like their mother used to, and then slips out of the attic.

Cassian will see his brother briefly again in three years. He’ll see him once more, for the last time, seven years after that.

In the attic, he waits for Nerezza to come back, and thinks of the steel gray box they buried their mother in, out in a barren field of ice, side by side with the grave that holds the ash remains of their father. He thinks of his parents resting together under the frozen earth, beneath the unforgiving gray skies of Fest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still writing this Nonsense, and am just shy of 70k words, with ten more years to go. 
> 
> (The pattern, if you haven't noticed by now, is two chapters per year of Cassian's life.) (save for the first few chapters/years and then for some reason there are 3 events the year Cassian is 8 because i wasn't paying attention.)
> 
> I'm estimating, when I'm done, this thing will be over 120k. So. We all have that to deal with.


	11. Ready

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is eleven years old when the Rebellion chooses him to lead his own mission.

Cassian is eleven years old when the Rebellion chooses him to lead his own mission.

He’s been piloting for the Rebellion since Wada gave him a stamp of approval, and following that, Cassian passed the Rebellion’s (few) tests to earn a piloting license from them. (He doesn’t have a real piloting license from Fest; the youngest age a pilot can be to be certified is thirteen, and so he’ll have to wait another couple of years, but the Rebellion is illegal on Fest anyway, so what’s one more law.) But all of Cassian’s flights so far have taken place within Fest’s icy atmosphere. He’s been up and down and back around the planet multiple times, has seen almost every snowy plateau and gray cliffside. He’s visited tiny villages and dense cities, encountered other people who share his ideals and others who would sooner see him shot. And many try to shoot him, of course. He’s a soldier, in a war.

Cassian and Nerezza haven’t heard a word from Zeferino since he left for Coruscant, over a year previously. In the weeks and months since Zeferino left, Cassian repeatedly attempted to talk about his brother with Nerezza. Nerezza had been open and enthusiastic about talking about their mother, who they lost around the same time, but she’d clam up whenever Cassian so much as uttered their brother’s name. Eventually, she would just walk out of the room.

Cassian has not spoken his brother’s name in seven months.

Instead, his brother’s name lingers unspoken, always at the back of his throat, catching and unforgettable.

When Cassian is eleven years old, he’s called in to speak with Travia and Sids.

He’s instantly on edge, remembering all too clearly what happened the last time he was invited to speak to the head of the Fest Rebellion and her second-in-command. Cassian still recruits for the Fest Rebellion, and still primarily recruits children, but he’s getting sloppier at remembering their names. Sids and Nerezza have repeatedly told him that he doesn’t have to know their names, that the child soldiers are not his responsibility, and it seems that years of telling him so might finally be working.

But this isn’t what’s actually happening. Rather, Cassian is closing himself off from the children, not letting himself learn their names so he doesn’t get so attached.

Cassian has a good memory. Refusing to let the names sink in, refusing to let the names paint themselves on the inside of his mind, is a challenge. But it’s necessary. 

Cassian is nothing if not a survivor.

It’s survival instinct that has him walking into the late meeting with Travia and Sids straight-backed, hands hanging loosely at his sides. Travia looks as impassive as ever, staring down at a table covered in maps, one hand on a map and the other fiddling with the arm of her repulsor-chair. Sids stands at her side, leaning over her shoulder, murmuring something. He glances up and, spotting Cassian, straightens. Cassian immediately moves into a salute.

The saluting thing is a fairly new addition to the Fest Rebellion. They also call each other by their formal military titles more often now. Travia says it’ll create a deeper sense of unity among the soldiers, and help legitimize them against the Empire. Cassian isn’t so sure about the first idea, but the second one is probably true.

Travia and Sids nod at him, and so Cassian lowers his hand, but remains standing straight, clasping his hands behind his back, hoping he doesn’t look as nervous as he feels.

“Corporal Andor,” says Sids. “We have a mission for you.”

Cassian nods. This was expected. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s quite dangerous,” Sids continues. “But we think you’re up for the extra challenge. You’ve been an exemplary soldier for us so far.”

This is somewhat unexpected. Sids is kind, but he never gives praise he doesn’t absolutely mean. And Cassian is eleven years old, and an orphan, and eager for approval from adults he respects. He tries not to preen too much at the words.

Travia narrows her ice cold eyes at him. “We’re sending you on a special mission to Mantooine.”

This is completely unexpected.

Mantooine is another planet in the Atrivis Sector that houses Fest. It isn’t Fest’s immediate neighbor, as it’s located on the other side of the Relgim Run; Fest’s immediate neighbor would be Devon Four, but Festians very rarely interact with anyone from Devon Four, as the government of the planet is run entirely by members of some unknown religious sect that doesn’t want much to do with anyone else. This arrangement, wherein Devon Four is left entirely alone, is found to be perfectly acceptable to the other planets in the Atrivis Sector.

What Mantooine is, more or less, is the mortal enemy of Fest. If planets could be mortal enemies, that is.

Mantooine is hot, and dry. It’s a planet covered in arid deserts, cavernous caves, and jagged and sharp outcroppings of black rock. It’s always sunny; the sun literally never sets on the planet, and it’s perpetually bathed in an almost unnatural sunlight that stains the earth red and orange. The temperature barely ever varies, and there are rumors on Fest that no one on Mantooine even owns a single coat.

It is, in short, the complete opposite of Fest.

Perhaps due to their fundamentally opposing natures, Fest and Mantooine have an extensive history of petty squabbling. They’ve had a few battles, on each planet, and even had one full-blown war once, but have never inflicted massive, or decisive blows to each other. There’s strong dislike between the people of the planets, but not real hatred. Most of the time, Festians and Mantooians are indifferent to one another. More or less.

The only thing gray about Mantooine is how its opinions of Fest vary.

Cassian hasn’t heard anything particular about Mantooine lately, and so Travia’s statement is immediately perplexing. But he’s a good soldier, and so he only says, “What’s the mission, ma’am?”

Travia and Sids exchange a glance, and Cassian wonders what part of his response was surprising.

“Reconnaissance,” says Sids. “We’ve heard rumors that more Imperial ships than normal have been seen traveling to and from Mantooine. We need you to find out if this is true, how many are there, and what they are doing.”

Cassian takes the orders in, filing them away, parsing out what he’ll need to do beforehand. “Is this a solo mission, sir?”

“You and two others,” says Travia, taking the question from Sids. “Specialist Dimmi Selmura and Private Nonia Chinzano. You’ll be leading this mission.”

The “obviously” goes unsaid, but Cassian almost hopes that whoever briefs Selmura on the mission says it anyway. Selmura is much older than Cassian (though, to be fair, most of the rebels are). He’s closer to thirty, but he’s only been with the rebellion for just a few years. He joined up after the Empire bombed the mail office next door to his shoddy cafe, making his loyalty to the cause simple at best, flaky at worst. He walks with an air of superiority that only he can see, and Cassian knows already that Selmura isn’t going to like taking orders from an eleven-year-old. Nonia is older than Cassian as well, though she’s probably only a little over twenty, and joined up just last year, after her rebel sister died when her freight ship, filled with supplies for the Fest Rebellion, was shot down by the Empire over Fulcra. Cassian has heard her frequently joke that she’s the replacement Chinzano sister, but from what he’s heard from those who’ve worked with her directly, she’s much more than a mere replacement body.

“When do we leave?” He asks.

“Oh-six-hundred hours,” says Travia. “You’ll get your ship confirmation from the hangar management at oh-five-hundred. You’ll get further mission instructions then as well.”

“Yes ma’am,” says Cassian.

Travia looks him over one more time, and Cassian wants to fidget with the weight of the Icewoman’s gaze, but remains still, looking back at her straightforwardly. He doesn’t want to appear too eager for this mission, but he also wants to convey the seriousness with which he takes it. He wonders how much of a risk Travia and Sids consider him to be, as young as he is, as they prepare to send him off-planet with a small team. He wonders if he really wants to know.

“You’re dismissed,” says Travia.

“Good luck,” adds Sids, ever diplomatic, and far more generous than necessary.

Cassian offers one final salute and almost runs down the hall.

His first step is to find Nerezza, to tell her he’s being sent off-planet and to not expect him back for a day or two at least. He finds his sister in their shared living space, a dark cold apartment with two twin beds, a small table with two rickety chairs that the two of them only use when they’re drinking coffee or mending their clothes, and a surprisingly large closet that contains all the things they brought of their childhood home with them to the base. The rest of their things were sold or given away.

Nerezza is perched on her bed when Cassian enters, poring over datapads and star maps. She barely glances up at him. 

“Hello, Cassi,” she says, dismissively, focused on her work.

“I’m being sent off-world,” he tells her, the words bursting from him without so much as a greeting.

She looks up at him then, eyes wide. “Where?”

Travia and Sids didn’t explicitly tell Cassian that the mission is secret, but he decides that he should act like it is anyway, since he doesn’t know. “I can’t tell you. But I won’t be here tomorrow. I’m not sure when I’ll be back, either.”

Nerezza stares at him, and then a slow smile spreads across her face. “Big mission. I’m proud of you, Cassi.”

Cassian feels his face reddening, privately ecstatic over his sister’s pride. Nerezza is the only family he has left on Fest, perhaps even the only family he has left period (Zeferino’s name slips around his head) and Cassian is eager to make her proud of him, see her happy to have him as her brother.

“This calls for a drink,” says Nerezza. She hops off her bed and goes to the closet, rifling through the boxes that litter the floor of it.

“Ezza, I can’t drink,” says Cassian, who is both eleven years old and aware he has a big mission the following morning.

Nerezza is seventeen years old, and she eventually straightens, clutching a bottle of Corellian gin, something Cassian had no idea was even in their closet. “It is not for you. It’s for me.”

He laughs as Nerezza opens a cupboard and pulls out two thin glasses, while he fetches the Reythan berry juice from the conservator. They each pour themselves a glass of their chosen drink, and Cassian follows Nerezza’s lead in raising a glass.

“To my little brother,” she says in Festian, and Cassian smiles more widely, because it feels more honest and meaningful in the native language of their home planet. “On the eve of his big, mysterious, off-planet mission. Best of luck, and the safest of travels.”

“Yes,” he says, and they touch glasses. Nerezza throws her drink back, grimacing slightly, and Cassian laughs. She’s still over a head taller than him, and so she can easily reach out and ruffle his hair in response.

“Are you scared?” She asks.

“No,” says Cassian.

“It’s okay to be scared,” says Nerezza, kindly.

“I know,” says Cassian. “But I’m not scared.”

Nerezza studies him, gently brushing the hair back from his eyes. She looks more like their mother the older she gets, so much so it sometimes hurts Cassian to look at her for too long, but in this moment her gaze is comforting. He isn’t sure what she’s looking for in him, but he waits patiently.

“No, I don’t think you are scared,” says Nerezza at long last. “Confident?”

Cassian shrugs. He’s fairly confident, sure. He’s been in multiple blaster fights at this point, has fought and stabbed a handful of troopers at close range, has clawed his way out of skirmishes and building wreckage. He knows how to handle himself, he knows how to predict the movements of others, he knows the noises and signals crowds inadvertently give when something terrible is about to happen, and thanks to all his years of delivering messages, he knows all the escape routes to be found in Fulcra. He’s been fighting for the rebellion for almost half his life. He’s almost a career soldier, and he isn’t even old enough to have a career.

More than anything though, he’s glad to have this opportunity. He’s waited for it. He’s proved himself, again and again. He’s more than earned his place, has paid for it in so much blood and information and fire.

He looks at his sister, at her hopeful face and the dark brown eyes they both share, inherited from their mother who has been dead for a year.

“Ready,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is shockingly little about Mantooine, EU "canon" or not, and so I made up everything about its climate. It is "canon" true that Mantooine and Fest do not get along though; I figured a point of contention could very well be their polar opposite climates, hence, Mantooine as dry desert.


	12. The Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is eleven years old when he comes into contact with a Rebellion that isn’t on Fest.

Cassian is eleven years old when he comes into contact with a Rebellion that isn’t on Fest.

He wakes extra early to prepare for his mission to Mantooine. Nerezza is still fast asleep on her bed, but she’s left out a note on their tiny mirror, and he reads _Good luck!!! Love, Ezza_ in her loopy handwriting, complete with smiley face underneath. He dresses and grabs his jacket, pulls on his boots, and gently kisses a snoring Nerezza’s forehead before leaving.

As Cassian predicted, Selmura is far less than impressed at having to follow the orders of an eleven-year-old. Nonia is much more polite, instantly jumping into a salute when she spots Cassian making his way towards where she and Selmura wait in the main hangar of the Fest Rebellion base. Her salute is a little clumsy, and she does it so quickly that it makes the thin tricopper bracelet around her wrist spin with abandon.

Selmura scowls, but makes a half of an effort, straightening to his full height, staring down at Cassian with an impassive expression that at least isn’t outright disrespect.

Cassian knows that he shouldn’t be leading this mission. His first trip off-planet shouldn’t also be the first mission he leads, but he knows better than to question Travia and Sids on this. He personally suspects that the Fest Rebellion is in the midst of planning something big, or believes something big is going to happen soon, that requires the senior leaders and soldiers to remain on the planet, which is why he’s been chosen to scout out Mantooine with two fairly new recruits.

He’s still committed to doing the best possible job he can, and he hopes Selmura and Nonia are similarly committed.

Cassian greets them perfunctorily, as _Specialist Selmura_ and _Private Chinzano_ (he can see the pride on Nonia’s face at the title, and remembers his delight when he was first given such a title, and wonders when he stopped finding the pleasure in the formality) and brings them inside the ship. They’ve been assigned a Z-10 _Seeker_ -class scout ship, which Cassian has only flown in once before. He isn’t sure where the Rebellion acquired the ship, illegally or legally, but he’s grown up seeing them around Fest, as they’re used by couriers in the Outer Rim more than anywhere else in the galaxy, so at least he’ll be comfortable flying it.

The ship is designed for one pilot and two passengers, so Selmura and Nonia buckle themselves in the cabin while Cassian sits by himself in the cockpit. He’s flown completely alone a handful of times, and finds he prefers it to flying with others. He likes the solitude, and the quiet, where he can stare up at the stars and hear only the ship’s rumbling and his own breathing. He doesn’t mind living in a tiny apartment with Nerezza, on a base that’s crawling with combative strangers and traumatized soldiers, but the peaceful silence of space, and the experience of flying over the snow and ice-covered mountains and valleys of Fest, brings him a certain kind of serenity he has yet to find anywhere else.

He carefully navigates them off-planet, staring at the blur of gray that is Fest as it passes beneath the ship, and then launches them into space. The ship moves smoothly into hyperspace, the stars becoming blurs of distant light, and Cassian leans back in the chair, breathing deeply.

He’s left Fest, for only the second time ever.

Cassian loves Fest, has spent his entire life surrounded on all sides by gray and white, snow and ice, but part of him is desperate to escape his home planet. He remembers when he flew himself and Wada to Garqi, remembers being surrounded on all sides by vibrant color, and aches to see color like that again.

He suspects that Nerezza, despite all her talk about family loyalty and cursing out Zeferino for fleeing the planet so abruptly after their mother’s death, also wants to leave Fest. He isn’t sure why she hasn’t brought it up with him; perhaps she thinks he wants to stay there, in Fulcra, the city where the dead and decaying remains of their parents are buried. He hopes this isn’t the only thing stopping her from leaving Fest; Cassian is unattached to his parents’ graves. They’re dead. His parents don’t linger there under the cold earth, waiting for him to visit them.

Most likely, Nerezza simply doesn’t want to leave the Fest Rebellion, as haphazard and young as it is.

 _Besides,_ Cassian reasons, checking the coordinates for Mantooine, _where would we go?_

He spends the rest of the flight staring at the stars.

Mantooine is almost blindingly red. Cassian has to squint for most of the landing, which is one of the smoothest landings he’s ever performed; the planet’s air is stunningly empty, and there are no clouds or storms he has to navigate through. There’s only dust, and dirt, and bright orange sand that the ship settles into with a soft lurch. He stares out the window for a long moment, taken aback by the wave of color that is the Mantooine horizon, with a sun that dominates everything like an irrepressible ruler. He’s never seen a sun that bright, or so _close_. It’s overwhelming.

Selmura is deep into a rant about the heat of Mantooine, already seeping in from the outside into the belly of the ship, when Cassian reaches his team in the cabin. Nonia rolls her eyes, but she’s tying her dark hair up, looking a little pained, cheeks already flushed pink. The three of them strip off their jackets, a novelty for Festians, and step outside.

The best thing that can be said about the oppressive heat of Mantooine is that it’s dry.

Cassian has landed the ship on the edge of the capital city of Mazl, planning for a short walk into the city, but the hot air that surrounds them makes the walk feel twice as long. He can feel sweat dripping down his neck, can hear Selmura’s heavy breathing and constant cursing, and spots Nonia out of the corner of his eye frequently wiping her forehead.

Their feet kick up sand, and Cassian can feel it bleeding into his boots, latching onto his clothes, and sticking to his face. He’s instantly reminded of the snow on Fest, its constant presence, and thinks maybe Mantooine isn’t that different from Fest after all.

The similarities keep coming, when they reach Mazl and see that, like Fulcra, it’s a city set almost entirely indoors. But while Fulcra’s facilities and tunnels are used to keep its citizens warm, Mazl’s facilities and tunnels are used, and built, oppositely. The city isn’t underground, but rather, built with shaded tunnels that stretch into the sky.

“Solar power,” Selmura grunts.

“What a treat,” says Nonia.

The three of them stare at the literally spiraling capital city, at the tunnels and buildings that stretch and march towards the sky, until the heat is too much and they have to duck into a tunnel.

Cassian spent much of the night before carefully planning out routes, and went over said routes with Nonia and Selmura before leaving Fest, and so the three of them join the throng of Mazl citizens with a surprising amount of ease. The people of Mazl are dressed head-to-toe in white or light gray or light brown clothes, with thin scarves wrapped around their heads. This is again quite similar to Fest, but Festians tend to prefer darker clothes and wear thick scarves to protect their faces against the cold, while he assumes Mantooians use scarves to keep sand out of their mouths and eyes.

The plan is to scout out the Port of Mazl as inconspicuously as possible, to see what ships they can spot, looking in particular for the Imperial ships that are supposedly visiting the planet. What they will do from there is less certain. Cassian strongly dislikes this lack of knowing, but it’s also been the typical M.O. of the Rebellion so far. There are always far too many variables at play at any given time, and even less knowable is who will still be there next week to respond to any changes.

Cassian has spent most of his life adapting to unexpected and difficult new circumstances, and it’s translating into how he lives his individual days. He supposes he could be worse off.

He directs Nonia and Selmura to different parts of the port, keeping them just far enough from each other to not appear as a group but close enough that he can keep an eye on them. He wonders if he and his team look plainly like they’re from Fest, wonders if this is enough to mark them as invaders and dangerous, and that’s before anyone even knowing they’re part of the Fest Rebellion.

The Port of Mazl looks like the Port of Fulcra, but Cassian expects most ports share similarities by virtue of being ports. Cassian steps into the alley behind the main port, finding a drainage pipe that leads into small tunnels that likely wind throughout the building. Cassian is eleven years old, and still small enough to move around places that adults can’t fit into, and he plans to do this until he physically is no longer able to. He pops open the cover of the pipe and slides in, forced onto his hands and knees due to the pipe’s narrow walls. This pipe seems to be used to drain excess spoiled water, and Cassian frowns at the muck slipping around his knees and gloved hands, but powers on, moving into the dark.

After a few minutes of crawling he realizes, suddenly, that he is not alone in the pipe.

He can hear someone else’s breathing.

They’re close.

Just as soon as he realizes he’s not alone does the other person as well, and both of them hold their breath in anticipation.

The pipe is completely dark, but humid and hot, a combination of the small space and the dirty water and the inherent heat of Mantooine. Cassian is sweating more than he ever has in his life, but he feels cold to the bone, as his brain funnels through his options. He knows he needs to find out who else could possibly be crouched in this tiny pipe with him, but turning on a light could immediately precede his death, as whoever it is could be ready with a blaster already in hand. He could start shooting without light himself, but he isn’t entirely sure what material the pipe is made out of without light to see it, and the shot could ricochet and hit him.

Cassian knows he’s running out of air and will have to breathe, and oh force, what will--

“Oh, kriff it,” says a strained voice from the dark, and a light flickers on.

It’s a child. Like Cassian.

She might be a year or two older than him, but she’s definitely just a kid, crouched in the dirty water exactly like him. Her skin is a rich black, somewhat similar in shade to Sids’, and her eyes are an almost ethereally light blue, framed by long eyelashes and some kind of cerulean-colored paint. She’s dressed in black, like him, but she has a pearly white scarf wrapped tightly around her shoulders and head that she’s somehow managed to keep remarkably clean, even while traversing the pipe.

She stares at him from over the thin white light of the flashlight in her fist.

Cassian stares back.

“Who the hell are you?” She asks.

“Me?” Cassian says, stupidly.

“Yeah, you. You’re Festian, aren’t you?”

“What gave me away?” Cassian asks, which is the second stupid thing he’s said in as many heartbeats.

“You’re wearing black,” she says.

“Oh,” says Cassian. “But you’re wearing black too.”

“Your accent makes you obvious.”

“Oh,” says Cassian, again.

The girl eyes him, but relaxes somewhat, and Cassian finally notices she’s had a hand on her blaster this whole time. The two of them are kneeling in the grimy water, the flashlight the only bit of light between them, casting their shadows on the short gray walls.

“What are you doing here?” Cassian asks.

The girl actually laughs at him. “What am  _I_ doing here?What about _you?_  You don’t belong here.”

“I don’t believe you belong in this pipe, either.”

“Funny,” the girl says, voice dry like the Mantooine air.

The two of them stare at each other, lapsing into silence again. Cassian can hear the water trickling around their knees, and the more distant sounds of the port, ships taking off and landing, people chatting, engines rumbling and back-firing and starting. He wonders how Nonia and Selmura are doing, but he doesn’t dare try to reach either of them through the comlink, not with this stranger so near, motive entirely unknown.

Suddenly, the girl speaks again. “How old are you?”

“What does that matter?” Cassian asks, concerned she’s only asking so she can decide how guilty to feel after she kills him.

“I’m thirteen,” she says.

It’s a sort of peace offering, and Cassian is still alive, so perhaps there’s a chance he’ll survive whatever encounter this is. “I’m eleven.”

“What’s an eleven-year-old boy from Fest doing in a pipe in the Port of Mazl?”

Cassian looks at the thirteen-year-old girl, at her dark clothes, clothes that’ll hide or at least mask any lingering stains from dirty water, and then studies the blaster at her hip, a blaster that is small but a kind that Cassian knows holds a surprisingly large amount of ammunition despite its size. He can see on her belt that she’s also carrying a mini trauma kit, similar to the one Cassian carries, and next to it, she also has a comlink.

He considers all this, and looks back up at the girl’s face, her narrowed blue eyes.

“The same thing as a thirteen-year-old girl from Mantooine,” he says.

The girl’s mouth opens, and then closes, as she looks at him. He waits, watching as she looks him over as well, taking in how similarly dressed they are, how he’s carrying the same supplies as her.

“Fest has a Liberators group,” she says at last.

Cassian nods. They might be called something different, but he knows a rebel when he meets one. “And so does Mantooine.”

He can tell the girl is just as surprised by this exchange of information as he is.

Fest and Mantooine, due to their frequent skirmishes, barely communicate with one another. Their only open channels deal exclusively in transport, export, and import issues, occasionally bringing up financial matters or food production problems. The Fest Rebellion has never bothered to open up a channel to Mantooine, because they care about what the Empire is doing, and not what Mantooine is doing.

Only now does Cassian realize that maybe they should’ve started talking years ago.

The girl swallows hard and lifts her free gloved hand, holding it out into the space between her and Cassian.

“I’m Taraja Ya’qul,” she says.

“Cassian Andor,” says Cassian.

He takes her hand, and they shake, still staring at each other.

“It’s nice to meet you, Cassian,” Taraja says.

“You too, Taraja,” Cassian says. He’s still anxious but the feeling of imminent death has passed, leaving him only shakily bemused. Even with all the unknowns and variables at play in this mission, he never anticipated running into a Mantooine rebel.

“Well,” Taraja says, “Let’s get going.”

He follows her through the pipe, as it widens and narrows, until they find themselves above an empty back room in the port. Taraja holds her flashlight over Cassian as he carefully tugs out enough of the pipe cover for them to squeeze out, jumping down to the floor. Taraja lands next to him, and helps him move enough tanks of fuels for her to stand on (she’s taller than he is) and pull the cover back over the pipe.

They peer out the window in the back room, looking out over the port, and watch a handful of ships fly in and out.

“Where are your people?” Taraja asks.

“Down there,” Cassian says. “And yours?”

“Down there,” Taraja says. “You heard about the Imperial ships.”

Cassian nods. “We wanted to see what was happening here. To find out if we should be concerned.”

“You should be,” says Taraja. “There have been more lately.”

“What are they bringing in?”

“It’s not what they are bringing in,” says Taraja, grimly. “It’s what they are taking out.”

“What are they taking out?”

“People,” says Taraja, and whatever Cassian was expecting, it wasn’t that.

According to Taraja, more people than normal have been going missing around Mantooine for the last few months. The Mantooine Liberators aren’t sure how many, because most of the people disappearing are the vagrants and the homeless, the unwanted and the destitute. They’re assuming the approximate number they’ve determined is far lower than the reality; the basic fact is that the Empire seems to be kidnapping people who won’t be missed.

“We don’t know why,” says Taraja. “It would make more sense for the Empire to carry away educated people, or the biggest and strongest of us. They are taking away the people Mantooine has discarded, instead.”

“To keep you from noticing,” says Cassian, and Taraja nods.

“Yes. Which means they are more interested in secrecy than anything else. Which is worrying.”

Taraja’s team is at the port to see if they can locate a manifest on where the Imperial ships are going. Cassian has already learned more than he expected to, and Taraja lets him follow her around the port, shadowing her through pipes and narrow corridors, hiding behind crates and spare parts beside her, both of them using their small statures to their advantage.

They don’t speak of themselves, but rather their own Rebellions. Cassian gives her a brief history of the Fest Rebellion, mentioning that the current Fulcra establishment grew out of an Insurrectionist Cell; he neglects to tell her the cell was founded by his father. Taraja tells Cassian about the Mantooine Liberators, and how the group originated in schools and hospitals, growing until it became a larger, underground operation. She doesn’t tell him how she came to be part of it, or how long ago this was, and Cassian doesn’t disclose this information about himself either.

Eventually, Taraja’s comlink goes off, and she answers, glancing at Cassian as she does.

“We have a manifest,” says a voice on the other end, a woman’s, or at least a girl older than Taraja.

“Where are the ships going?” Taraja asks, breathless.

The voice on the other end sounds bewildered. “The Horuz System.”

The Horuz System is another system in the Atrivis Sector, like the Mantooine System and the Fest System. It’s located closer to Mantooine than it is to Fest, and Cassian knows very little about it. He knows it’s a much less populated system than either Fest or Mantooine (which is saying something, as Mantooine is significantly less populated than Fest) and very likely also less developed than the two systems as well. He’s never met anyone from the Horuz System, and he’s never met, or at least aware of, anyone who’s visited it.

Taraja and Cassian look at each other, their faces mirroring the other’s in confusion.

“Are you sure?” Taraja asks.

“According to the manifest,” says the woman. “There aren’t any Imperial ships listed with a destination in the Horuz System after tomorrow, for the next two weeks at least. They might be done with us.”

“Okay,” says Taraja. “Head back to the meet-up. I’ll be there soon.”

She switches the comlink off, looking at Cassian.

“Strange,” says Cassian, and Taraja shrugs.

“We’ll tell our leader anyway,” she says, “We’ll see if anything more comes of this.”

Cassian and Taraja clamber back into the drainage pipe they originated from, and begin the slow crawl back to the alley. Cassian gasps a little as he slides into open air again, and for the first time, he’s a little cold on Mantooine. But only a little; it’s just the heat of the Mantooine air is slightly colder than the heat trapped in the pipe.

The two children walk to the mouth of the alley, and then stop, looking at each other.

“I shouldn’t meet your team,” says Taraja.

“I shouldn’t meet yours,” says Cassian.

“I think I trust you,” says Taraja. “But they won’t trust you. And I doubt your team will trust me, either.”

Cassian agrees, reluctantly. But the distrust and dislike runs deep between Fest and Mantooine, and if their rebellions are to unite, he knows it won’t be done in a random-chance meeting between two children in a side alley off the Port of Mazl.

Still, he fumbles for his pockets, finding his notepad and pen. He scribbles down his name in Basic and Festian, and then adds the codes needed to reach the main headquarters of the Fest Rebellion, because that’s where he lives.

He tears the paper out, and hands it to Taraja. She takes it, staring at his name for a long moment. And then she moves, copying his movements, writing down her name and information and passing it to him.

“In case,” Cassian starts. He pauses. “I don’t know. Just in case.”

Taraja raises her eyebrows. “A Festian who reaches out to a Mantooian? You must be a great recruiter for your Rebellion, Cassian Andor.”

He is, and he knows it, but he shrugs. “I think we might be able to help each other.”

“I think so too,” says Taraja.

She holds out her hand and Cassian takes it.

“Yes,” says Taraja. “It is very nice to meet you, Cassian Andor.” She smiles at him for the first time.

(But not for the last time.)

“It is very nice to meet you, Taraja Ya’qul,” Cassian says, unexpectedly smiling at her.

(But not for the last time.)

“Until we meet again,” she says, and then adds something in Mantooian that Cassian can’t understand. He frowns a little, and she clarifies, “It is a wish for plentiful luck and good health.”

Cassian nods, and offers the same sentiments in Festian. Taraja laughs a little, but smiles brilliantly, and her eyes are so very blue and clear.

“Goodbye, Cassian!”

And then she’s off, running past him, disappearing into the glare of the blinding Mantooine sun. Cassian stares after her for a moment, still clutching the paper with her information in his hand. He hurriedly tucks it into his pocket, collects himself, and calls Selmura and Nonia to meet him back at the ship.

They erupt into questions when they see him, alarmed and concerned as to why Cassian has called them back so early; they had allocated three days on Mantooine for reconnaissance. Cassian tells them about Taraja, and the Mantooine Liberators, and the Imperial ships kidnapping the lost people of Mantooine and taking them to the Horuz System.

He stops when he notices the skepticism and dismay on Selmura and Nonia’s faces.

“She could have lied,” says Nonia.

“She’s Mantooian,” says Selmura. “Of kriffing course she lied.”

Cassian suspected this would be their response, but is disappointed anyway. He’s resolute though, and convinced that Taraja had not lied to him, furthered by the fact she never warned her teammate that he was there when she made contact about the manifest. Taraja reminds him of himself, and Nerezza, and his father, and all the other Festian rebels he’s ever met. Cassian is pretty good at reading people, at recognizing their motives, and he saw the kind of fire and determination in Taraja that he sees in the mirror every day.

The fly back to Fest.

He’s almost surprised at how gray the planet is, and his eyes have to adjust to the endless ice and snow as he guides the ship over the planet and back to the base. He can hear Selmura and Nonia murmuring to each other in the cabin, and if this mission has resulted in them losing their faith in his leadership ability, well, at least they seem to like each other more now.

Travia and Sids are dismayed, to put it lightly, when he meets them for debriefing.

Travia remains silent as Sids all but curses Cassian out, reprimanding him for not bringing back hard, physical evidence of the Imperial ships’ movements, and furiously rebukes him for trusting a Mantooian child with very little to go on besides her supposed affiliation.

Cassian bites his tongue, and takes the yelling without objection.

(From then on, he makes sure to have actual evidence of information he’s learned.)

(He knows how impossible it is to convince higher-ups without it.)

(No matter how convinced he might be of information he learns.)

(No matter how he much he wants to believe it.)

Travia speaks at last.

“What you say,” she says, dark brown eyes studying him, as cold as the ice that covers the planet outside. “What you say of these Mantooine Liberators is… Interesting. But we will not deal with them at this time.”

Cassian shakes his head. “Ma’am, they could help--”

“They could,” she agrees. “But we have bigger problems to worry about, and other, more definitive, rebellions and systems to align ourselves with. Mantooine is not our concern.”

“Why did you send me there, then?” Cassian asks, and the animosity in his voice surprises everyone in the room.

Travia narrows her eyes. “We wanted to know if what the Empire is doing on Mantooine will affect us. We know now to keep an eye on our homeless populations, and any unusual Imperial ship movements. Either way, Mantooine is no longer our concern.”

Cassian swallows. “Understood, ma’am.”

“You’re dismissed, Andor,” she says, and Cassian recognizes that her not using his rank is her own way of censuring him.

He can feel Sids’ steady gaze on his back as he leaves the room.

Cassian is eleven years old. It is not the first time he has disagreed with Rebellion leaders.

(It won’t be the last time, either.)

He walks back to the apartment he shares with Nerezza. She isn’t there, and he sinks onto his bed, pulling the paper with Taraja’s information out of his pocket. He looks at it for a moment, memorizing the words written there (he can’t write in Mantooian, and so he settles for memorizing the shapes of the letters) and then he gently slides the paper into the pages of his most recently acquired book, an adventure story featuring the jedi in the Clone Wars. He slides the book under his bed, and lays down.

He stares up at the gray ceiling.

He tries very hard to not think of Taraja’s dazzling blue eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the point of the "people going missing from Mantooine" thing is that the Horuz System was where the Death Star was originally being built, and tested. it would still be being built at this time (15 BBY, 15 years before ROGUE ONE) and so i'm suggesting that the Empire just needed cheap/exploitable labor to actually BUILD the thing, with the weapons being a separate operation.
> 
> I also like this because it kind of implies how the Rebellion would've had an opportunity to become aware of the death star before it was really too late, and this goes with the "chaotic good" ish appearance of the rebel alliance in ROGUE ONE. or something.
> 
> [there is no canonical evidence/writing that anything like this happened with Mantooine but i am all about that "could be!" canon life]


	13. The Dark Trooper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twelve years old when he stares at true evil for the first time. He will never forget what it looks like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: this is the darkest, most disturbing chapter to date, so brace yourselves. 
> 
> Descriptions of violence (war), and disturbing themes re: body horror.
> 
> (I don't know how to link to End Of Notes, but jump down there if you want more details/spoilers.)

Cassian is twelve years old when he stares at true evil for the first time. He will never forget what it looks like.

The Weapons Research Facility has existed on Fest for longer than Cassian has been alive. No one is sure exactly when the buildings it’s housed in were built; it’s unusual for buildings to be built and then torn down on Fest, with housing and shelter such a valuable commodity on the ice planet, but whatever the Weapons Research Facility used to be has been lost to time. What it is now is a top-secret Imperial research and development center, where the Empire brings in top scientists and specialists for unknown, but undoubtedly deadly and dangerous, expeditions and testing.

The Facility itself is located far from Fulcra, adding to its air of mystery. Fest is pretty densely populated, especially for a planet which has a climate so set on killing human life, but its human population is contained, more or less, to about a dozen cities. The Facility is located far from any of them, on the other side of Fest, the side of the planet that sees the smallest amount of direct sunlight.

Travia and Sids plan a raid on the Facility when Cassian is twelve years old.

Cassian doesn’t know why the raid is scheduled for now; he’s been asked to attend only the barest of briefings as of late. It’s been a few months since his mission to Mantooine, and Travia and Sids have both been very cool towards him, choosing the cold shoulder as punishment for his actions rather than actual censure. Nerezza, upon finding out about the mission and the information Cassian had learned from a supposed Mantooian rebel, had unleashed a truly remarkable series of curses on Cassian.

She’d grabbed Cassian, and shaken him by the shoulders, staring at him in amazement.

“You must not be so trusting, Cassi,” she’d said. “It makes you naive.”

“Trust is all we have,” Cassian had said. Nerezza had looked at him, considered his words, and shaken her head, muttering more curses in Festian, so Cassian could really see how furious and disappointed she was in him.

Nerezza had forgiven Cassian for the mission fairly quickly, but Travia and Sids clearly had not. Cassian hadn’t led a mission since Mantooine.

He knew he’d redeem himself, sooner or later, and that what had happened on Mantooine would be forgotten.

More or less. He talks to Taraja, occasionally.

The Imperial ships have stopped coming in frequency, as the manifest had suggested, but there are still plenty of Imperial troopers and soldiers for the Mantooine Liberators to deal with. Cassian has spent many hours messaging Taraja about the Fest Rebellion, and in return, he’s read her descriptions of the Mantooine Liberators. Their two groups are quite similar, beginning and ending with their core goals of dismantling the Empire.

Cassian had been communicating with Taraja exclusively in typed messages, until one day, as he went through donated bins of spare parts with Wada, he discovered a small, broken, and outdated hologram projector. He’d shown it to Wada, as Wada had instructed him to show him anything that could be useful, but Wada had taken one look at the projector, about the size of Cassian’s hand, and shaken his head.

“Too small,” he’d said. “We somehow have a high standard when it comes to our holograms. Not to mention, this one is twenty years old.”

Cassian must have looked at the projector for too long, for Wada had added, “If you want it, take it. Try to fix it on your own, but you know where to find me if you cannot.”

It’d taken Cassian two weeks, but eventually he did get it to turn on. It buzzed a little too loudly for its size, and tended to create a more flickering and disruptive image, but it still showed Taraja’s big eyes and thin face, and so he couldn’t really complain. It was more than he’d expected to get.

Cassian would listen to Taraja describe life in Mazl as he carefully put together blasters, looking up to acknowledge everything she’d said and offering his own sympathy or anecdote. He’d wait patiently, watching as she stepped away from whatever she was projecting from, listening to her moving around her own room on Mantooine, politely pretending he couldn’t hear what she was saying when she’d occasionally speak to someone out of sight of him. He’d feel Taraja’s eyes on him as he talked to her while he put his dinner together, or mended his flight jacket, or washed Nerezza’s dishes.

Cassian liked having a friend who didn’t know anyone he knew. She listened without judgment whenever he complained about Travia or Sids, or the Rebellion itself. And then she’d respond with similar gripes about the Mantooine Liberators.

They were still hesitant in talking about their families, and never pushed the other on it. Cassian wanted to tell her about Zeferino, and what his brother had done, but found it difficult to begin. He worried Taraja would wonder if he was a spy for the Empire, if maybe he shared his brother’s allegiance to the enemy. They were still learning to trust each other, and Cassian didn’t want to risk losing this new friendship, and so he kept his brother’s name out of his mouth and inside his head only.

He had plenty to say about his sister, anyway. And the vast majority of it was adoring, and admiring, and Taraja picked up on this quickly.

“You really love her,” she’d remarked, resting her chin on her hand and peering at him, a fuzzy blue blink of an image.

“It’s just the two of us now,” Cassian had said, and immediately closed his mouth.

Taraja only nodded, and perhaps wisely, and kindly, said only, “I understand.”

She’d then launched into a long story about how the Mantooine Liberators had recently recruited an Empire-dissenting chef from Coruscant, and all the strange Core Worlds food she was trying, and Cassian had been grateful for the distraction and conversation change.

He suspected Nerezza might be right about him being too trusting, but he also suspected he was not wrong to trust Taraja.

Cassian has to cut a talk with Taraja short one day, when he gets a message from Nerezza, telling him they’re being called in to an unknown, but important base-wide meeting with Travia and Sids.

It is at this meeting that Travia and Sids announce they’re raiding the Weapons Research Facility.

Cassian picks Nerezza out of the crowd of murmuring rebels. She’s hovering near the front, leaning against a support column, arms crossed over her chest. Nerezza is eighteen years old, and has inherited her mother’s curly dark hair, though she keeps hers much shorter, never letting it grow past her chin. Her eyes are locked on Travia and Sids, but Cassian can see the fire burning in her face. Nerezza is always angling for a fight, and the Weapons Research Facility is, perhaps, the biggest reason for Imperial hatred on Fest.

Because the Weapons Research Facility is a tangible, and prominent, piece of the Empire. Because the Facility is in their backyard. Because the Facility is rumored to be home to unspeakable and impossible to understand horrors, to great weapons and terrible people. Because Fest is so undervalued by the Empire, which only sees the planet as a place to mine the supermetal phrik, at the cost of the lives of the hardy people who constantly climb out of the ice and snow that blankets the world.

To be Festian is to be a survivor, but the Empire has never acknowledged this.

They see the rebellious people of ice and snow and gray and cold only as Bossuk roaches that have somehow not been stomped out yet.

They do not see the resilience of them, how the frost that lines their faces and boots doubles as a second skin, a protective armor.

The Fest rebels gear up for the raid in two days’ time with malice on their tongues and potent rage in their hearts.

They will need it.

Cassian is assigned to Nerezza’s team. She’s an officer for the Fest Rebellion now, known as First Lieutenant Andor, a higher rank than their father ever accomplished.

Cassian sits in the back of the transport and watches his sister as she takes the time to speak individually to each member of her twelve-person team, shaking their hands, memorizing their names, and offering encouragement and warmth. She laughs openly with them, and is as tall as most of them, and each person clearly respects and listens to her without hesitation, including the Clone War veterans who are taller and older than her. They all look at her with high regard, and Cassian can’t help but be reminded of their father, and he wishes more than ever that their father could somehow see Nerezza now, see the great leader she has become in his absence.

Nerezza saves Cassian for last. She kneels down in front of him, and takes his hands in hers.

“Ready, Cassi?” She asks, and he looks in her brown eyes, identical to his, and wonders if she sees the same fire in his own gaze as he does in hers.

He nods. “Ready, Ezza.”

“I’m proud of you, Cassi,” she says, squeezing his hands. “You… Papa died when I was your age, and I look at you, and think of all you’ve accomplished already, and I… I am very proud of my brother.”

Cassian feels his face reddening, and looks down at his boots. The last person who said they were proud of him was Serafima; he considers the words to be some of the highest praise possible, someone admitting they’re glad to have him around, and he takes the words to heart.

“We’re going to be okay,” says Nerezza.

She leans forward and presses a kiss to his forehead, wrapping her arms around him in a hug that Cassian returns.

She straightens after a moment, and returns to the front of the transport. Cassian watches her go.

Their team has been tasked with backing up the larger, main teams that are infiltrating the Facility, and so they’re the third transport to land a fourth of a mile away from the Facility, in a snow-drenched cavern. Snow is lightly falling as the doors open, and Cassian follows Nerezza and the rest of the team, struggling through snow that stands above his knees. Nerezza walks tall, plowing through the snow like it isn’t even there, but she glances back and sees Cassian lagging, and waits for him to catch up, so he can walk in her shadow and let her lead the way.

He spends the rest of the trek copying her steps.

They climb the last embankment, and Nerezza abruptly stops, causing Cassian to run into her, as he’s been moving with his eyes focused on his feet. He looks up, and immediately sees why she’s stopped.

The Facility is crawling with stormtroopers and other Imperial soldiers and squads. Tall Walkers pace the landscape, casting huge lights over the snow, searching for any movement. And there’s plenty to be had; the first two teams have already arrived, and are currently locked in battle with the troopers and soldiers guarding the Facility.

As Cassian watches, a rebel soldier aims a missile launcher at the huge steel doors of the Facility. The soldier fires, and the missile slams against the doors, sending one spiraling off its hinges.

The noise is deafening, the air filled with blasts and screams and gunfire and explosions.

Nerezza turns around, and takes in her team. Her face is all brilliance, her smile lethal. She spares one look for Cassian, glancing down at him and winking.

She looks back up to the team waiting for her command. She grins.

“Light it up.”

Cassian has never been in a battle like this before. The snow seems to be falling more heavily, and ferociously, hitting his face sharply and making his eyes water. He does his best to keep Nerezza in his sights, racing after her as she sprints across the open space in front of the looming Facility. She’s resplendent, iconic, her blaster raised and sending red bolts of light into stormtrooper after stormtrooper.

By the time Nerezza and Cassian reach the main doors, their team has been halved in number.

They are all breathless, their faces tinged red by the freezing air and brutal snow. Cassian is shaking, but he’s unsure if it’s from the temperature or the traumatizing fear racing through his veins. He’s seen battle before, would even venture to say he’s seen plenty of it, but he’s never seen anything as fierce or deadly as that landscape.

Nerezza is looking out past the doors, back to the front of the Facility land, the plateau they’ve just run across and nearly died on. “Here comes the air support.”

Sure enough, Cassian can hear the telltale whistles from the sky, indicating the Fest Rebellion’s Navy division has finally arrived. The ground begins to shake as the bombs drop, bringing bright splashes of white and blue light to smash onto the ice and gray earth, trying to take down the shield generator and missile turrets that protect the Facility.

“Let’s roll,” says Nerezza, and Cassian and the rest of the team follow her down the hall.

The interior of the Facility is dark, all gray hallways lit with the sparsest of lights, all of which are flashing dark red with alarm and blaring a repeated caterwaul. Cassian doesn’t know what their specific orders were, but he trusts Nerezza wholeheartedly, as does the rest of the team, and they trace her steps into the blackness, moving further and further into the unknown Facility.

They follow the screams and distant blaster fire through the hallways.

Until, that is, they’re stopped by a squad of stormtroopers, dressed in all-black uniforms Cassian has never seen before.

The rebel team breaks up, diving into side corridors for cover. Cassian slides to the ground, making himself as small as possible, and he’s twelve years old so this isn’t much of a challenge. He carefully levels his blaster at the nearest dark trooper, his mind recognizing that this is a man who moves more like a droid, and wondering how this can be.

The trooper he’s firing at spots him and raises his rifle.

Cassian drops to the ground and feels the blast just pass over him, where his head had been seconds before.

He can hear the trooper approaching, and realizes that Nerezza’s voice is coming from somewhere much further away than he thought she was.

Without much of a choice, Cassian clambers to his feet, and runs in the opposite direction.

He can hear the bizarre clanking gait of the trooper as it ( _as it? As him? Is this a man or a droid?_ ) pursues him, and Cassian continues to run, zig-zagging sporadically and down side passageways, aware that he is moving further from his team as he does so. He doesn’t try to glance back and see how close the trooper is, aware that his parka, with its thick hood, would most likely block his view. He needs to find a place to stand his ground, to turn around and fire back--

And just ahead, there’s a door, ajar. Cassian runs through the doorway and dives to the side, turns around, and--

Shoots the dark trooper in the chest.

The trooper trembles for a moment, quivering, and Cassian cannot see into the large and impermeable helmet to gauge the trooper’s expression, to see what will happen next.

The trooper collapses to the gray stone floor in a heap.

Cassian exhales shakily, and lowers his blaster. He waits a moment, staring at the pile of black metal and armor, and then gets to his feet, approaching the trooper.

He’s still moving, but disjointedly, and obviously with difficulty. Cassian approaches cautiously, keeping his blaster raised and his steps light. He reaches the trooper in time for the trooper to raise his arm, press a button against his neck, and open the front of his helmet.

And he is a man.

A man with lined tan skin, neat black hair, and deep brown eyes. He’s gasping, his breath ragged but also strangely watery, which Cassian knows to mean one of his lungs has likely been punctured. Cassian knows he should do something to help the man, but he’s frozen, because it’s also clear now that the man’s arms are completely made of metal, a droid’s arms, with thin metal joints for fingers and steel plates for biceps.

And he can see the hole his shot has made in this man’s chest, and he can see the wires peeking out, some flaming and some giving off feeble sparks of electricity.

And all Cassian can feel is pure horror, a visceral horror that burrows inside him, inside his body where he knows his human heart beats, pumping real blood to his lungs, to his human flesh and grown muscles, because he is all human, a fact he’s never taken to be something remarkable before. It’s just been the truth. It’s just been him, being alive.

The man’s breaths are still coming in stilted gasps, but his eyes have locked on to Cassian.

“You’re just a kid,” he mumbles. Cassian can’t place his accent, but he knows it isn’t Festian.

“What are you?” Cassian asks, and he knows it’s a terribly rude thing to ask, but he’s staring at something he cannot understand, and he’s twelve years old, and twelve-year-olds usually ask that kind of unasked for thing with impunity.

The man gives a stuttering laugh, closing his eyes for a long moment before opening them again.

“I don’t know anymore,” the man says. “I used to… But now…”

He glances down at his metal body, which is leaking a thin trail of artificial blood down his side and onto the cold gray floor. Cassian feels himself fall to his knees next to the man, his blaster and his fear all but forgotten in the face of whatever horrific thing is happening in front of him.

Without asking for permission, and without a clear motive, Cassian raises his hand, and tugs off his glove. The man stares at his hand as Cassian moves it towards the man’s head. Gently, with hesitation, he brushes his fingers across the man’s cheek.

Whatever else the man might be made of is unknown and inexplicable to Cassian, but he can very clearly tell that the man’s face is made of human skin, just like his own. The man whimpers a little at the contact, closing his eyes, and Cassian watches as tears slip down his face.

“I forgot,” the man says, voice trembling.

There’s a sudden loud beep, and then the man stops moving and breathing entirely. His eyes are still closed.

Cassian leans back on his heels, his own breathing somewhat labored.

He’d heard rumors of the Weapons Research Facility, that the Facility housed some truly alarming and devastating weapons of destruction, was crafting new technology that would spell a quick and fast death to any rebel who crossed the Empire. But this is something else entirely.

This is inhumane. This is unforgivable. Indefensible.

Cassian has grown up fighting the Empire, working against it, but he isn’t sure that he’s ever truly _hated_ it until this moment.

Of course, losing his father and his mother to the Empire were crushing losses, but Cassian mostly felt _sad_ towards the events; but this, what he’s feeling now, is pure rage.

He can’t think of anything else to explain the red hot anger that is now coursing through him, staring at the crumpled body of a man turned into a machine, who died with barely a memory of human contact to comfort him. Cassian feels rejuvenated, like he could take on the Empire by himself, like he wants to fight this war if only for this anonymous man who died in a poor mechanical facsimile of a body.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, kneeling on the hard gray floor, staring at the man.

Eventually, he leans forward, and searches the man. He finds an identification card, naming the man as MR-9887, and listing off his assigned station and enlistment date. Cassian studies the date and realizes this man was a clone soldier, likely then a veteran of the Clone Wars. He wonders how the man ended up on Fest, in this Weapons Research Facility, and when the man was turned into a droid, like the Separatists’ droids he’d spent the Clone Wars fighting.

He wonders when the Empire took the man’s humanity.

Cassian’s ruminations are interrupted by his comlink buzzing. It’s Nerezza, calling his name, demanding to know where he is.

Cassian moves in a daze after that.

He steals a datapad from the man’s body (a body made of armor, of steel, a body that is not man) and slips it into his jacket, alongside the identification card he knows isn’t worth much. He gets to his feet and does a quick scan of the room, ascertaining it to be a cleaning supplies room of some type, and not worth further investigation.

He steps out into the hall. The screaming has died down somewhat, and the caterwauling alarm has stopped blaring, but the lights still flash in dark red, passing over his face, as Cassian begins a quick jog back to where he lost his team.

Nerezza hugs him when she spots him, and Cassian can feel by the tight way she grips him that she’s been worried. The rest of the team claps him on the back or squeezes his shoulder, and he returns the friendly gestures, all while feeling bizarrely disconnected from his body.

His body, that is real.

He’s real.

Cassian doesn’t ask what else has happened at the Facility, and only follows Nerezza and the rest of the team back outside the building. The Fest Rebellion’s ships have taken out most of the bigger guns and missile launchers, so the run back across the entrance plateau is much calmer than it was going in. The blast of cold air and icy snow to his face should shake Cassian somewhat, but he barely feels it, running surprisingly agilely over the drifting white snow that coats the ground.

He barely hears the explosions and echoing booms behind them as the Rebellion ships directly hit the Facility the rebels have vacated.

(This is not the day the Weapons Research Facility is destroyed. The Empire will rebuild it. The Weapons Research Facility on Fest will eventually be obliterated in fourteen years.)

They reach the transport without speaking. One of the team is injured, and so Nerezza immediately goes to help with the field medkit, leaving Cassian to find a quiet spot in the back of the transport to curl up in. He feels the transport rumble as it lifts off, but he doesn’t move. He sits in silence, knees tucked to his chest, the dead man’s last moments playing like a holovid in front of his eyes.

 _The Empire took his humanity_ , Cassian thinks, _But I killed him_.

Cassian is twelve years old.

The man isn’t the first man Cassian has killed. Not by far. The list of people Cassian has killed seems to rapidly be on its way to becoming a never-ending record of names and identities that blur together into a monolithic being that lives in Cassian’s chest. But this man’s death feels different than the other deaths. Cassian knows he was valid in killing him; the man was definitely trying to kill Cassian, and would have succeeded had Cassian not shot him first. But there’s still something about it that doesn’t feel right to him.

Cassian is human.

He knows this. With certainty. It’s a basic fact.

But as Cassian thinks about the man, and all the others he’s killed, he wonders if someday he will be something a little less than human. Not because his lungs and vital organs have been exchanged for silicone and metal, but because of all the lives he’s taken, almost blindly, convinced of his own righteousness.

He remembers the mantra Sids had given to him, when he was nine years old:

_Everything we do, we do for the Rebellion. It’s justified._

_Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion._

_I’m justified_.

A part of him wonders if this was the same reasoning the Empire had in mind when they took the man apart and put him back together as a machine.

 _But surely_ , Cassian thinks, _The Rebellion would never do such a thing_.

He agrees with this assessment. He believes it to be true, in his heart.

The Rebellion would never destroy someone’s humanity to create a lethal killing machine.

Still, he finds himself putting his head in his arms and trying his best not to cry.

Back at base, Cassian sits with Nerezza and the team as Travia and Sids move through each team, debriefing them, gathering intel and asking questions. When their team is called in, Cassian walks alongside Nerezza, his mind very quiet and somber.

He waits his turn, and then he describes the dark trooper, what he saw, what the man said, and then offers up the man’s datapad and identification card.

Sids lets out an impressive string of curses. Nerezza stands very still, gripping the table’s edge. The team murmurs among themselves, glancing at Cassian. Travia doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

When she does speak, it is directly to him.

“Corporal Andor,” she says, the ice in her voice that led to her Icewoman nickname more apparent than ever. She waits until Cassian looks at her, and continues. “This is excellent work. You have done well today. Very well.”

Cassian nods in recognition. He stands very still, hands locked together behind his back, making himself keep eye contact with her.

Travia picks up the datapad, and studies it.

“We’ll see what we can mine from this,” she says. “You’ve done a great job for the Rebellion.”

Sids is nodding beside her, and Cassian moves his eyes from Travia’s in time to catch the gleam of approval in Sids’ eyes. It is the most Sids has looked at him since Mantooine, and Cassian waits for that old surge of pleasure at the clear gesture of appreciation that he used to feel whenever Travia or Sids would praise him.

It doesn’t come.

He’s so cold.

The team is dismissed shortly after that. Travia, in her repulsor-chair, moves away with the datapad, Sids speaking urgently in soft tones to her. The dark trooper’s identification card is still on the table, seemingly abandoned.

Cassian reaches out and takes it. He slips it into his pocket.

He and Nerezza don’t speak as they walk back to their apartment.

She waits until he has sat down on his bed before she goes to him, gripping his shoulders and waiting for him to look at her.

“Are you okay, Cassi?” His big sister asks.

“I’m tired, Ezza,” says Cassian.

Nerezza looks at him, at the slump in his shoulders, the dried sweat and melting ice on his face, and in his hair. She looks at his legs, the ends of his pants a little wet from running in so much snow, and then she looks at his hands, clasped in his lap.

His knuckles are white, and he’s trembling.

“It’s okay, Cassi,” she says, and this is what causes Cassian to fall apart.

He begins to cry.

Nerezza drops to her knees, wrapping Cassian in her arms. She feels her heart break as her little brother sobs, clutching her shoulders and burying his face in her neck, his breath catching and stopping and starting again. She holds him as tightly as she can.

She remembers that Cassian is twelve years old.

She closes her eyes, and feels her own tears leak out.

Nerezza is eighteen years old.

“I’m so sorry, Cassi,” she whispers. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

(Nerezza has long worried their family did not tell each other of their love enough, and now she is terrified that this moment is a confirmation, and a condemnation of her failure.)

Cassian cannot speak. His throat is clogged with tears, with water, with ice and melting snow, a gray sludge that threatens to suffocate him.

Cassian is twelve years old.

He knows he helped the Fest Rebellion today. He knows that he’s been welcomed back into Travia and Sids’ good graces, forgiven for his mistakes on Mantooine.

He does not know why he feels so defeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this scene is a reference to the "Dark Trooper Project" which is a "canonical" thing that happened at the Weapons Research Facility on Fest, which is another canonically real thing.
> 
> the idea of the project was to remove the organs and limbs of clone veterans, replacing them with cybernetics; this is the same technology that powers the Darth Vader suit. according to wookiepedia, sometimes 70% of a clone's body would be replaced. 
> 
> and there's this: "However, as the subjects were forcibly recruited into the project, many Phase Zero Dark Troopers could not cope with the state of being more machine than man and attempted suicide. The project was eventually shut down as the Empire grew in power and the recruitment rate of non-clones rose." (Wookiepedia).


	14. Reprogramming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twelve years old, and he is angry.

Cassian is twelve years old, and he is angry.

He knows it’s starting to show up in his work, in how he behaves. He’s faster now, more prone to recklessness and wilful bravery, less hesitant in his actions and less worried about any repercussions that could befall him.

Travia and Sids never question him on his sudden change in temperament and attitude. Rather, they embrace it, adding Cassian to more dangerous missions, letting him be the one to rally and gather others to his rage-fueled cause. Cassian still mostly recruits, of course, and he’s still the best at it. But he’s now tapped into the rage that governs so many of the Festian rebels, a rage that Cassian, so young and anxious, had never fully understood before.

He frequently tells potential recruits the story of the dark trooper he encountered in the Weapons Research Facility, using the story to entice and alarm, bringing the unsure and scared to the Fest Rebellion, because danger and depravity really is out there. It’s close, just on the other side of Fest, locked away, but the Empire is busily repairing the Facility, and one day soon it will be fully functional again. It will bring true evil back to Fest, ready and able to slip out, to permeate and pollute the ice that covers the planet.

The story frequently invokes sympathy and outrage and horror, and more and more rebels join the Fest Rebellion.

It is not enough for Cassian.

He has a hunger inside him now, a hunger for justice and vengeance. He never stops thinking of the man, the dark trooper who died only with a clone identification card and no other apparent familial connections. Cassian still has the man’s identification card, and keeps it hidden away in his room, in the closet, under a stack of clothes. He brings it out and looks at it from time to time; not for the information, which he has long since memorized, but to look at the clone man’s face, the impassive eyes and worry lines running over his forehead.

Cassian has so many questions about the man, about the clone soldiers that are rapidly approaching extinction, but has no one to pose them to.

Nerezza has noticed the change that has swallowed her little brother. She frequently displays signs of wanting to talk to Cassian about how he’s feeling, to check in, to find out what she can do to help him, but never actually says the words. She hovers in their apartment, moving from sink to closet to bed to table and back again, occasionally running a hand over Cassian’s hair or squeezing his shoulders, all gestures to remind him that she’s there.

Cassian finds himself oddly impervious to her touch, something that has comforted him all his life.

Taraja has also noticed a change, but this is probably due more to the fact that Cassian rarely has the time to speak to her anymore. She continues to call, and even has resorted to sending coded messages when Cassian doesn’t answer, checking in, asking if he’s okay, if he’s even still on Fest anymore. Cassian answers the messages about once a month, until Taraja calls one day and he happens to actually be in his room, patching himself up after a mission gone awry.

She flickers in front of him, blue and luminescent, and obviously turns alarmed.

“Cassian, what’s wrong?” She asks.

“Hello, Taraja,” says Cassian, because he’s pretty sure this is the first thing you’re supposed to say when greeting someone for the first time in a while. “And nothing. I’m fine.”

“You look awful,” she says.

Truth be told, Cassian has not looked at himself much lately. He assumes she’s talking about the bleeding stab wound in his side, which isn’t too bad really. He shrugs off Taraja’s worries, turning the conversation back to her, asking how it’s going on Mantooine, if there are any new developments with the Empire and any unknown work they might be doing there.

He hasn’t told her about the man. He doesn’t think he will.

He’s worried that she’ll understand what the man means to Cassian, unlike anyone else.

Taraja ends the call earlier than normal, but Cassian doesn’t feel as disappointed as he should. He puts the hologram projector away in his desk, and gets to his feet. He spots the short mirror hanging on the closet door, and, a little curious, approaches it, looking at himself for the first time in a while.

He’s starting to lose the baby fat he’s grown up with, and he can see that his face has been thinning out somewhat. Cassian was always rather small to begin with, but he notices that he can see his cheekbones more prominently than he remembers being able to. He isn’t sure why this is; if it’s just because he’s twelve years old and getting older, or if it’s something more sinister, more damning.

He’s beginning to look more like his father than his mother.

It was inevitable, he thinks, but he’s unsure why he feels a little hopeless too.

The door to the apartment opens, and Nerezza walks in. She pauses in the doorway, looking at Cassian, who’s standing in front of the mirror and staring at his own reflection.

A moment later, she’s standing beside him, winding her arm around his, and leaning against his shoulder.

Nerezza is still taller than Cassian, but they both know this is likely to change within the next few years. Nerezza never even reached their mother’s height, and their father was a bit taller than Serafima, so they’ve determined it likely that Cassian will eventually be taller than Nerezza, if only by a little bit.

Cassian looks at himself and his sister in the mirror, at their matching dark eyes, tan skin, and weary faces, and surprises himself when he speaks.

“What do you think Zeferino is doing now?” He hears himself ask.

Nerezza sighs, turning her head to press her cheek against Cassian’s hair, and doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Cassian keeps eye contact with her through the mirror, and waits.

Zeferino has been gone for almost three years.

“I don’t know, Cassi,” she says at last.

“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” Cassian asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Will we ever see him again?”

Nerezza stills, closing her eyes.

“For our sake,” she says softly, “And for the sake of our family, and our childhoods… I hope not.”

“I miss him,” says Cassian, quietly. “I know you don’t want to hear that--”

“Stop,” says Nerezza. She opens her eyes and looks at Cassian, shaking her head. “I miss him too, Cassi. All the time. I feel… I feel bad, for him leaving the way he did. I wish I could have kept us all together after Mama died.”

“You couldn’t have,” says Cassian. “Zef wanted to go. He told me.”

“He did not want to leave you,” says Nerezza. “He loves you. Still, I think.”

“I love him too,” says Cassian.

Nerezza nods, turning her face to press a kiss against Cassian’s head.

“You are easy to love, Cassi,” she says. “So loved. Please never forget that.”

Cassian isn’t so sure about that. He thinks of the man, the dark trooper he shot and who died in front of him. He thinks of the other nameless, unknown people he’s killed, just in the past couple weeks, not to mention in the last four years, since he killed the assassin in Wada’s house. Cassian hasn’t decided yet if it’s possible to love someone who kills so casually like that.

But he looks at his sister, who has also killed, and knows that he loves her.

Perhaps it’s possible.

He and Nerezza stand in silence, looking at their reflections in the mirror. Nerezza runs her hand through Cassian’s short hair, thinner and straighter than her own but similar in length, and he closes his eyes, feeling calm and peaceful for the first time since the dark trooper died.

He remembers being ten years old and not wanting people to see him hold his mother’s hand or stand close to her, and thinks of how ridiculous that was, how ridiculous trying to distance himself from his family has been.

He hopes he’ll remember this feeling.

A week or so later, Wada pulls him aside in the corridor.

Cassian hasn’t seen much of Wada lately. Wada has been flying cargo ships for the Fest Rebellion, even making a handful of trips back to Rodia, meaning his trips take at least a week longer than they ought to, as Wada takes extra time to visit his family. Cassian, and Travia and Sids, can’t really fault him for taking advantage of his proximity to a family he so rarely sees, and so Wada is granted the longer mission timeframes.

Still, Cassian hasn’t seen Wada at all for over a month, and so he grins widely at the sight of the Rodian, the grin sliding off his face when he takes in the way Wada’s round ears are almost pressed flat against his head. Wada’s pupil-less eyes even seem to be narrowed, which Cassian isn’t sure is even physically possible for a Rodian.

Cassian knows he’s in trouble.

“Come here,” says Wada, grabbing Cassian’s upper arm and tugging him down the hall.

Cassian follows, because Wada is bigger and stronger than him, and because he isn’t sure yet what exactly he’s done wrong in Wada’s eyes. He trusts Wada, absolutely, and is quite convinced Wada would never attack him, so he doesn’t feel like he’s in danger. He feels more or less like how he would feel whenever Serafima would unexpectedly call his name from her studio: apprehensive, and a little guilty.

Wada leads Cassian to a corner of the main repair shop, the space Wada has unofficially claimed for himself. Cassian has spent many hours sitting next to Wada, learning from him, digging through rubbish bins and finding pieces that could help the Rebellion.

There are no rubbish bins back here today, but rather, a tall, powered-down TC-series protocol droid in silver plates.

Cassian feels himself smiling again. Wada has taught him how to program smaller droids, a handful of astromech droids and ones similar to them, but he hasn’t yet learned how to program droids that can speak Basic and interact directly with people. Wada has told Cassian that these droids are more difficult to program, and even more difficult to reprogram, because not only do you have to override core features, but you must also rebuild the droid’s identity.

“Wada,” Cassian says, eagerness permeating his voice. “Where did you get it? Are we reprogramming it?”

“Brought it back from Rodia,” says Wada, letting go of Cassian’s arm and moving to his workbench. He heaves up his toolbox and begins rifling through it, as Cassian shuffles towards the protocol droid. “And yes, we are reprogramming it. We are also going to talk, little one.”

Cassian’s smile turns to a frown. He’s much smaller and younger than Wada, sure, but he isn’t sure how he feels about being called ‘little one’, though he should be used to it from Wada by now. He also isn’t sure what Wada means by talking.

“What about, Wada?” He asks.

“I think you might forget, sometimes,” says Wada, not looking at Cassian but continuing to dig through his toolbox, laying out a handful of tools on the bench. “That your sister and I do speak to one another. We might even be called friends. At the very least, we have a great deal in common, beginning and ending with our similar interest in your well-being, Cassian.”

Cassian looks at the floor, stepping back from the protocol droid.

“You are sad, Cassian,” says Wada. “And angry.”

“I, It’s been…” Cassian shakes his head, uncertain and unwilling to say any words, to describe any of his emotions.

Wada waits, pausing in his work, resting his hands on the workbench and looking at Cassian with his black bug-eyes.

“You heard about the dark trooper?” Cassian checks.

Wada nods. “A terrible event. I am sorry you had to experience that.”

“But you aren’t surprised.”

Wada shrugs. “I do not think we know a quarter of the reprehensible things the Empire commits, and has done. That dark trooper… It is only the beginning.”

“I was surprised,” says Cassian.

And this is something he doesn’t want to admit. Because everyone has long believed that the Empire is dealing in dark and dangerous weaponry, has been committing horrible acts of violence and massacre, has ruined millions of lives with impunity and without hesitation. Cassian has read reports, and first-person accounts of such events, has heard them spoken second-hand. He doesn’t know what it is about the dark trooper that has shaken him so much. He doesn’t like admitting this, because he worries the other rebels will think he’s never been as committed to the cause, as interested in dismantling the Empire as they are.

(Part of him worries that this is, in fact, the truth.)

“There is no shame, in wanting to believe in the good of others,” says Wada. He stands, picking up his tools and moving to the other side of the protocol droid. Cassian watches as he begins to unscrew the head of the droid off the neck. “In fact, I would say the fact that you, twelve years old, fighting for half your life, can still believe in goodness, and humanity, is… It is something to be proud of, Cassian.”

“I’m not sure it is,” says Cassian.

“Others will tell you it isn’t,” says Wada. He finishes unscrewing the head and abruptly shoves it into Cassian’s arms. It’s heavier than he expected. “But they are wrong. Trust is a gift, Cassian. You have much of it. And a gut that will not lead you wrong, if you couple the two together. You should trust yourself.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” says Cassian.

“It’s a challenge,” says Wada. He turns back to Cassian and takes the protocol droid’s head back, gently popping the front open, revealing the mass of bolts and wires that make up the droid’s mind. He hands Cassian a screwdriver and points to a spot, and Cassian gets to work.

“Learning to trust, and empathize, will be one of the greatest challenges of your life,” says Wada. “Your gut will tell you to do things that you will doubt. But, Cassian, if you cannot trust yourself, then who can you possibly trust?”

Cassian thinks this is probably a wise and pertinent point, but isn’t fully sure he can understand and agree with it, not at the moment, at least.

Cassian is twelve years old.

“I trust you,” he says. “And Ezza. And Travia, and Sids, and the rebels, and--”

“But we may not always be with you, Cassian,” says Wada, raspy Rodian voice surprisingly gentle. He pauses, reaching out one webbed green hand to lay on Cassian’s arm. “You will make new friends, new comrades-in-arms, where sometimes trust is the only currency that matters. Trust, and empathy, and a drive for goodness. A drive to make the galaxy a better place.”

Cassian swallows hard, and nods his head. Wada squeezes his wrist.

“You’ve a good heart, Cassian,” he says. “Do not lose it. Do not let this war take your goodness from you.”

“I will try,” says Cassian, and Wada nods.

“Sometimes that is all we can do,” Wada says.

Cassian finishes unscrewing the drive, and carefully tugs it out, handing it to Wada. Wada holds it up to the light, frowning at the piece, which is slightly dented.

“It’s salvageable,” he says. “We can still teach this droid a thing or two.”

“What are we teaching it?” Cassian asks.

Wada looks at him, and his ears wiggle a little in amusement. “We are teaching it to fight for the Rebellion.”

Cassian follows Wada back to the workbench, as Wada grabs a penlight, shoving it at Cassian and directing him to hold it over the drive.

“The key to reprogramming a droid,” says Wada, “Is to give it purpose. Droids function almost solely through purpose, but we can give it even more than that. We can give it a personal identity: individuality. We teach the droid to doubt, and to be cynical, but also to be aware of repercussions and fallout. Droids love to compute, and we will teach this droid that there are more things to factor in than just the number of lives that can be lost in a battle scenario, for example; we will teach the droid to consider which lives are lost, and what they mean. We will teach the droid that it is possible to prioritize some lives over others, even if that means losing ten men rather than just one.”

“Is that good?” Cassian asks. Wada pauses, looking back up at him. “I mean, is that for the best?”

Wada laughs his wheezing Rodian laugh. “I am not convinced droids can be _good_ , Cassian. Not like us.”

Cassian has never reprogrammed a droid by himself, has never really spent an extensive amount of time with a droid that can speak to him, and so he can’t determine if Wada has a point or not, without any evidence of his own to counteract it. But he thinks of the man, the dark trooper, who might’ve been more droid than human, and wonders about the goodness the man might’ve had in him, even buried deep down past the orders or programming that made him shoot at a twelve-year-old boy running away from him.

Cassian believes and listens to Wada, so he files away the instruction, including the suggestion that droids cannot be good.

(He will, many years from now, realize that Wada was incorrect.)

(Cassian will learn a droid can be good.)

(Cassian will learn a droid can not only save your life, but change it.)

Cassian is twelve years old, and for now, he settles next to Wada on the workbench, in the corner of the main repair shop in the base of the Fest Rebellion, and learns how to reprogram a protocol droid.


	15. Be Brave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is thirteen years old when the Empire conducts a direct attack on the Fest Rebellion base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Graphic depictions of violence, including war imagery, some descriptions of body horror.

Cassian is thirteen years old when the Empire conducts a direct attack on the Fest Rebellion base.

He’s in the apartment with Nerezza, and the two of them are eating dinner together. Nerezza is nineteen years old, and has been dating a blue-skinned Twi’lek girl named Viri for the last two months. Viri is a refugee from Ryloth; she’d almost been sold into slavery, but had managed to barter and cheat her way onto a ship that was headed off-world, eventually ending up on Fest. Nerezza was the one to officially invite Viri into the Fest Rebellion, and the two of them have been together ever since.

Cassian doesn’t know Viri very well yet, as Nerezza has a habit of banishing him from the apartment whenever Viri stops by, but the few times he’s gotten to speak to her have been friendly. She didn’t grow up speaking Basic, and she’s newly trying to learn it, but she’s a careful listener who dotes on Nerezza, and has taken to calling her Ezza, like Cassian does, which immediately makes him like her. She’s also taken to trying to teach Nerezza how to cook, starting off with the simplest Twi’lek foods she thinks Nerezza can handle. Cassian clearly doesn’t get to talk to her much, or else he would’ve warned her by now that Nerezza is bizarrely hopeless when it comes to cooking; unlike Zeferino and himself, she doesn’t have the patience for or interest in it.

But what Nerezza is very interested in is impressing her girlfriend, so tonight, she’s cobbled together a couple Twi’lek dishes for Cassian to try, as the sacrificial ewok of sorts before she serves the same meal to Viri.

“No offense, but if I poison you, I know you’ll still want to hang out with me,” says Nerezza, pouring her attempt at Rycrit stew into a bowl in front of Cassian. The only thing he knows for sure to be in it is Rycrit meat, having gone with Nerezza to the exotic food market in Fulcra to buy some. The stew is still bubbling, a good sign, but Cassian isn’t so sure about its murky pale green color.

Nerezza sets down a plate of homemade munch-fungus bread next to it, which Cassian has been told is what Twi’leks eat with it.

“You’re sure humans are meant to eat this?” Cassian asks.

“Of course,” says Nerezza, now serving herself stew and sitting down. “Viri makes it for me all the time.”

“No, I mean _your_ cooking--”

He dodges to the side, narrowly avoiding the bread Nerezza throws at his head.

The Rycrit stew is, astonishingly, actually good. Cassian was hoping for it to merely be edible, so he’s practically thrilled. He can feel Nerezza watching his expression carefully as he eats, so he gives her a thumbs up to communicate his approval. She beams, and claps her hands, looking almost ten years younger than she actually is.

“I think I’ll surprise Viri with this next week,” she says, eating with more confidence now that Cassian has not keeled over dead. “She’s deep in the Mountains with her team right now, she won’t get back until--”

But when Viri is expected to get back, Cassian never hears. For at that moment, a thin whistle shrieks through the air, and the whole Fest Rebellion base suddenly shakes violently.

He falls off his chair, his half-empty bowl of stew wobbling on the table above his head. He stares up at Nerezza, who’s managed to remain sitting, but is looking at the ceiling, at the light gray dust that has been shaken from the rafters, falling silently around them.

“Ezza,” says Cassian, softly.

“Ssh,” says Nerezza.

Another whistle shrills through the air. Nerezza suddenly moves, leaping off her chair and landing on Cassian, covering him with her own body.

There’s a loud blast, and the room shakes even more violently, and Cassian can hear multiple heavy-somethings fall a few doors down. He can also hear voices from outside the room, and running feet, and now, as the building stops trembling, the sound of screaming.

“We’re being bombed,” says Nerezza, still sprawled over him. She scrambles to her feet and yanks Cassian by the arms to his feet, and, dinner forgotten, they flee the apartment.

Alarms are piercing the air, and the entire base is awash in brilliant red and blue warning lights. Cassian follows Nerezza down the corridors of the base, as the base-wide intercom turns on, and he recognizes Travia’s voice calling all pilots to their ships, and captains and generals to their stations, and soldiers to their posts, as the Empire is bombing the base.

They’ve run a few drills to prepare for this scenario, but Cassian is still not ready for the reality of the Empire attacking the building he’s lived in for three years, the place that has become synonymous with _home_ to him.

They reach the main hangar, and Nerezza stops him, spinning around and grabbing him by the shoulders.

They aren’t on the same squad, not for this event, and this is where she must leave him.

Cassian looks up, into his sister’s dark eyes, sees her fire, and hopes she sees the same in him.

“Be brave, Cassi,” she says.

He swallows, hard. “I will, Ezza.”

She steps forward and kisses his forehead, wrapping her arms around him. Cassian returns the hug, pressing his face into his sister’s shoulder. He inhales sharply, breathing in her scent, the scent that is all Nerezza, all sparks and righteousness.

“I love you,” Cassian says.

Nerezza nods against his forehead. “I love you too, Cassian. Be brave!”

She turns then, letting him go, and begins to sprint in the opposite direction he must go, heading towards where the commanders and leaders are gathering to coordinate. Cassian watches her go, studying her short, curly hair as it bounces around her head, until she is out of sight.

He allows himself one moment to breathe, quashing down his fear, and then he turns and runs towards his own team’s meeting spot.

He’s assigned to Captain Nasscal’s team, and meets the Captain and the dozen or so others in the northernmost corner of the main hangar. Captain Nasscal is also from Fulcra, about forty years old, and completely bald on his head though he usually has a neatly-groomed beard of gray-black hair on his face. He’s been with the Fest Rebellion for some time, at a high enough level that Cassian has only spoken one-on-one with him a handful of times.

Captain Nasscal looks over his team for a moment, counting heads, and then announces that they’re going to help evacuate the medical wing.

Cassian understands why he’s been put on this team, with this assignment. He has a lot of experience with the Fest Rebellion and has actually lived on the base for three years, so he knows all of the routes in and out of the buildings, the fastest ones, and the safest ones. He’s also still one of the smaller soldiers, so he’ll be able to slip in and out of tight spaces, better able to help clear out any passageways that might collapse under the force of an Imperial bomb.

It isn’t the most glamorous or particularly heroic of missions, and Cassian would privately prefer being a pilot in one of the Fest Rebellion’s ships, trying to shoot down the Imperial tie-fighters bombing them, but he trusts the leadership that has given him this role and he’ll do it without complaint, because he’s a good soldier.

He follows Captain Nasscal and the rest of the team into the medical wing which is, as expected, absolutely chaotic. There should be someone in charge, but as Cassian moves further into the wing, past the beds and curtains and more advanced medical technology, he overhears someone saying that the head doctor was killed when the passageway she was in collapsed on top of her from a bomb hit.

The bombs are still raining down, and there’s no sign of them stopping anytime soon, even as the rebel ships take off to combat them, and so a full evacuation is ordered.

Captain Nasscal directs Cassian to start packing away all the medicines he can, into more manageable boxes for easier moving. He quickly obeys, racing to the cabinets that line the walls, opening everything he can and packing it into the empty trauma bags that have been dumped on the floor. He listens as patients are wheeled out of the medical wing behind him, and they frequently stop near him so he can pile medicines and other supplies onto the gurneys alongside the patients.

The base continues to quiver and tremble, the bombs falling at a steady pace, easing and abating and then coming back with further force. More often than not, a blast shakes the building so hard that it knocks Cassian off his feet, and he knows he’ll have more than a few bruises to deal with the next morning.

He wonders why the Empire is bombing them now, wonders what could’ve happened that would’ve caused the Empire to decide the Fest Rebellion needs to be brutally attacked. The raid on the Weapons Research Facility was over a year ago now; the Empire would’ve had plenty of time and opportunity to attack the Fest Rebellion before now.

“Sergeant Andor,” a voice calls.

Cassian turns, and it’s Nonia, from the Mantooine mission from two years ago. They’ve run into one another a few times since then, have worked together on missions once or twice, and Cassian’s pretty sure she’s been promoted a couple times too.

She limps towards him, favoring her right leg, her pitch black hair tied up in a messy bun, an ID bracelet around her arm indicating that she’s a patient in the medical wing.

“You should go, Nonia,” says Cassian, eyeing her bandaged leg. Blood is seeping into the white patch that’s wrapped around the middle of her thigh, and Cassian guesses the wound came from a blaster.

“Not a chance,” says Nonia, grimacing slightly even as she argues. She’s close to twenty-three years old now, but she still looks a little uncomfortable disobeying a suggestion from a soldier who outranks her, regardless of age. “I can still walk. I want to help.”

Cassian sighs, but he recognizes the dedication in her voice, her drive to be of service; it is the exact same thing he hears in his own voice most days, and has heard in his own voice when he’s begged Nerezza or Travia or Sids to give him more opportunities.

He nods, and Nonia wobbles to his side, dropping to her knees to fish medkits out of the back of the opened cabinet drawers. She rolls up her sleeves, and Cassian can see new burn scars on her arms, alongside the ever-present tricopper bracelet gleaming around her left wrist.

“Your bracelet,” he says, wondering if casual conversation will calm them down and help them focus on the task at hand, “I’ve never seen you without it. Where did you get it?”

Nonia smiles a little, and that, at least, is worth Cassian’s pressing.

“It was my sister’s,” she says. “It was… It was all we had left of her. From when her ship crashed.”

“I’m sorry,” says Cassian, and he is. Nonia talks about her sister frequently, and Cassian knows that she was the reason Nonia signed up for the Fest Rebellion in the first place, but he never guessed that her sister could’ve been the original owner of the tricopper bracelet.

Nonia shrugs. “It’s fine. She’s been gone for a while now. She doesn’t miss the bracelet, trust me.”

And Cassian has to laugh a little at the morbid humor. Nonia cracks another shaky grin.

They work together in silence after that, listening to the screams, sobs, and yells of the Fest rebels that permeate the air around them. The bombs continue to fall, and Cassian is unsure if he’s just paranoid and scared, or if the bombs might actually be getting closer to their part of the base.

He soon gets his answer, when the shrillest and loudest whistling noise comes tearing through the air, and the medical wing is ripped into pieces.

Cassian is thrown through the air, and he hits what he can only assume is the plain white rock wall of the medical wing. He slides down it, as dust and debris fills the air, and he covers his head with his arms and hands, pulling himself into a tight ball, listening to the sounds of the ceiling caving in and the building falling to rubble. He keeps his eyes tightly closed, as a wave of dust, ash, and human remains that have been reduced to nothing but grit and burning bits of skin washes over him.

His ears ring, and he starts coughing, as he waits for the charred and broken pieces of the medical wing to settle into the frozen earth of Fest, waiting until he’s sure he can move again, waiting until he’s sure he can still feel his body.

After what feels like an eternity, Cassian realizes that everything in his immediate vicinity is entirely too still.

He looks up, and gasps.

He’s trapped under a thick gray slab of stone that was once the ceiling of the medical wing. It’s fallen awkwardly, at an angle, and this is the only thing that has saved Cassian from being crushed and killed.

He stares up at the slab, and then looks around, considering his options. He only has about a foot of space above his head, and around two feet in front of him. There’s a tiny bit of light, slipping in through the crack of air that has not been blocked by the fallen slab. He has nothing of obvious use around him on the ground, only smaller pieces of gray rubble, bits of snow, and glittering ice.

Cassian feels for his pockets. He isn’t wearing his flight jacket, hadn’t the time to grab it in his and Nerezza’s haste to flee the apartment, so he’s stuck with just his shirt, trousers, boots, and--

Nerezza would kill him if she’d known he’d had his pistol on him while they were eating dinner.

He yanks his pistol out from his boot, turning it over in his hands. He sometimes forgets that he’s even carrying it, as he usually has an additional one on his belt when he leaves the apartment. This pistol is smaller, and was given to him by Wada on his thirteenth birthday. It’s Rodian, a DT-12 blaster, that Wada had adjusted in shape for Cassian to use, what with Rodians’ hands being differently shaped. The pistol is lightweight, easily concealed, and remarkably dependable.

“Just like you,” Wada had said, as he’d pressed it into Cassian’s hands.

Cassian grips the pistol tightly, and takes a deep breath, struggling not to choke on the gray dust and smoke that is filtering into his alcove. He pauses, gathering himself, and then trains the blaster carefully at the end of the slab directly in front of him, bringing his knees as close to his chest as he can.

He shoots, and the end of the slab is knocked down, sending it careening to the gray floor. Cassian drops the blaster and lifts his arms, groaning as he catches the slab before it can reel back and hit his legs. He breathes shakily, as he balances the slab, using its momentum to stand one end on the ground just before his toes, and the other pointed at the stormy sky, filled with ships and explosions.

Cassian almost laughs, shocked that he’d been successful and not completely crushed. Carefully, he drops one of his hands back to the ground and retrieves the pistol, and, with nowhere else to put it, grips the handle in his mouth, returning his hand back to the slab.

He takes another breath, and then jumps, letting the slab slide to the floor where he’d been moments before, scaling the edge of it like a ladder out from under the remains of the medical wing. He emerges from the wreckage, feeling like someone who’d just crawled out from his own grave.

Cassian is thirteen years old.

He takes his pistol to his hand again and looks around.

Numb horror courses through him.

The base is in shambles, nearly unrecognizable. He can see rebels emerging from various stable pockets, running full-pelt across the barren wasteland of ice that surrounds the base. Bodies litter the area, people killed by gunfire, or smoke inhalation, or a direct bomb hit, or from the base collapsing on them, a death Cassian himself has barely escaped.

A Fest Rebellion x-wing fighter, broken into five pieces, charred and still burning, lies on the ground twenty feet away from him.

The medical wing itself is completely destroyed. Cassian can see Captain Nasscal leading a few patients over a pile of rocky stone, the entire right side of the Captain’s face stained red with blood from a head wound.

Cassian becomes aware that he should be able to hear people screaming, and the building shuddering, and fires smoldering and roaring, but he can’t. His ears are still ringing with the force of the bomb.

He’s in shock.

He knows the feeling, knows it so well, he could almost call it family.

Cassian closes his eyes, trying to pull himself together. He has very little to ground himself with, as the base is in pieces, and he can’t hear anything, and the only thing he can feel is the numbness spreading in his chest coupled with the freezing air of Fest. He squeezes his eyes tighter and tightens his hands into fists at his sides, and reminds himself that he’s at the Fest Rebellion base in Fulcra, on Fest, that he’s Cassian Andor and he’s thirteen years old and he was just talking to--

“Nonia,” Cassian calls, not bothering with formalities, voice raspy with smoke and ash. “Nonia! Nonia!”

He spins around, aware he must be an obvious target, but he’s too focused on trying to find Nonia in the messy debris and gray stone. He knows where he emerged from, but he has no way of guessing where Nonia might’ve been thrown in the bomb blast. The entire medical wing has been brought down, and he can only see splashes of blood, like ornate, unknowable paintings printed on bold gray canvases.

But, Cassian realizes, that isn’t all he can see.

There are body parts, human and alien alike, strewn across the ground. He sees a right arm sticking out from a heavy slab of gray ceiling, and a leg, cut off at the knee, ten feet away from anything else. There are bits of fingers and ears, lost shoes, gloves, and helmets scattered over everything, like props in an unorganized production.

It’s all very macabre, and paralyzingly gruesome, and Cassian feels his stomach turn, but his hearing must be returning because he thinks he can hear a thin whistling headed this way, and--

A left hand, sticking out of a triangle of fallen ceiling slabs. The hand is fairly small, and Cassian would guess it belongs to a woman, but as he approaches it, he realizes it definitely did belong to a woman. It belonged to Nonia Chinzano.

A tricopper bracelet rests just above the wrist bone, just above where the slab has collapsed onto the bone, all but severing the wrist from the body it was connected to.

Cassian slides to his knees next to the hand, and reaches out. He presses his fingers to the wrist, searching for a pulse or any sign of life, but the hand is already growing purple, is clearly already cold and dead, and with the pile of stone and support beams it’s just barely sticking out of, Cassian knows the rest of the body it belonged to is dead as well.

Cassian looks at the tricopper bracelet for a moment.

But the whistling is definitely growing louder, and bombs will likely fall at any moment. He needs to find shelter.

He gets to his feet and begins to clamber across the remains of the medical wing, moving towards the only remaining parts of the base left standing. He’s dressed in a dark gray shirt and black trousers, and he’ll stick out in the white snow that coats the land outside the base, and for once he curses himself for wearing such dark clothes, even though all Festians do, because the point of wearing black on a snow-covered planet is to stand out, so you can be found if you’re lost in the ice.

Cassian needs to be lost right now.

He isn’t going to reach any kind of stone shelter in time, so he turns to his old standby, the immediate cover trick he learned as a six-year-old: a snowbank.

He dives into a pile, feeling snow slide under his shirt collar, moving over his bare back. He’s instantly shivering with frigidity, but he burrows further deeper, doing his best to make sure he’s covered, as the whistling grows in intensity above him. He covers his head for the second time that day, as the bombs begin to fall again.

Cassian is thirteen years old, and it takes everything he has in him to prevent himself from screaming as the ground shakes around him. He digs his elbows and toes into the earth, trying to anchor himself, desperate to not go sliding out of the snowbank. The ground under him is very obviously colder and smoother than the snow above him, and he realizes that he must be lying on a sheet of ice, making his situation even more precarious.

The whistling eventually stops, leaving only the crackle of fires and wails of the dying and injured, but Cassian doesn’t leave his snowbank encampment until he hears a new noise.

It’s a ship, landing.

Nearby.

He crawls on his hands and knees, shivering, out of the bank.

About a hundred meters away, an Imperial ship has landed, its platform lowered and extended to the snow-covered earth. As Cassian watches, four squads of stormtroopers run down it, followed by three men in gray Imperial uniforms with thick gray coats, carrying heavy black blasters. They spread out, moving to different areas, including the plateau of ice on the other side of the base where numerous rebels are fleeing across, the haphazard bits of the Fest Rebellion base that are still standing, and the larger piles of debris of stone and rock that used to be the rest of the base.

Gunfire shatters the air, and the screams start up again, but there are noticeably less than there should be, with the number of people Cassian had known to be on the base at the time of the bombings.

And Cassian does what he’s always done since he joined the Rebellion; he runs towards the screaming, and the chaos, and the battle.

The main hangar is the only part of the base to remain in its normal condition, more or less, and this seems to be where most of the survivors have gathered. The only ships left in the hangar are broken or damaged ones that can’t fly, and Cassian takes some comfort in knowing that it’s likely a good number of rebels have already been evacuated.

Stormtroopers are firing at the rebels that have either decided to make their stand in the hangar, or been drawn there by lack of any other available shelter. As Cassian watches, rebels crouch behind crates of ship parts and bins of imported food, reloading and readjusting rifles and pistols, and Cassian prepares to run across the tarmac to join them.

He’s distracted by bright red blaster fire skating just past his face.

He turns, and sees only a blur of gray; one of the uniformed Imperial officers has spotted him, and is making his way towards Cassian.

Cassian can’t do much out in the open like this, not without getting shot in seconds, and so he darts away, moving back towards the crumbling remains of the main part of the base attached to the hangar, looking for cover. A pair of steel doors somehow still stand, almost comically, and so Cassian runs to them, tearing them open and entering the hallway. The blue and red lights are flickering on and off sporadically, but the alarm has been disconnected, and save for the mess of abandoned star maps, datapads, clothes, and used ammunition that litters the floor, it could almost look like any other day of unstable electricity at the base.

He hears the door open again behind him, and knows the Imperial officer is on his tail, and so Cassian turns, and raises the pistol gifted to him by Wada, and--

He freezes.

As does the officer.

Because Cassian knows that face. He sees an extremely similar one in the mirror every day, save for the eyes, because his eyes are bigger and darker than this man’s, because Cassian has his mother’s eyes, while this man has his father’s eyes.

Because they share the same set of dead parents.

Because it’s Zeferino.

Zeferino, who is seventeen years old, of legal age in the galaxy. Zeferino, in the steel gray uniform of an officer of the Empire, bearing the Imperial insignia on his sleeve, cap tight on his head and covering the military-grade short haircut he wears his brown hair, Cassian’s hair, in.

Zeferino, who stares at Cassian like he’s seeing a ghost.

“Cassian,” says Zeferino, voice a whisper.

“Zeferino,” says Cassian, and though his voice is a little higher, he sounds just like his brother, because he is just as shocked as him.

Zeferino blinks, and lowers his solid black Imperial pistol, until it’s pointed uselessly at the floor. Cassian mirrors him, pointing his own black pistol to the ground, his arms oddly heavy.

“You’re alive,” says Zeferino, and he speaks in Festian, so pronounced is his astonishment.

And some part of Cassian recovers, and he feels his anger at the Empire, his hatred, come barreling back.

“No thanks to your efforts,” he says, viciously, also in Festian.

Zeferino pales, his brown skin lightening in horror. “Oh, kriff, no, Cassi. I didn’t… I thought…”

“Where else would I be, Zef?” Cassian asks, and he thinks it’s a fair question, because Zeferino knew he was a soldier for the Rebellion when he left him, and why would that have changed?

Zeferino swallows. “I thought you’d have died years ago, if you were even still here. But look at you… You’re thirteen now, right?”

“Yes,” says Cassian, because he seems unable to help himself when it comes to answering his older brother.

“Look at you,” Zeferino says again, and his voice wavers in an emotion Cassian cannot explain or understand, because his brother stands there, in the remains of Cassian’s rebel base, that he helped destroy with the bombs dropped by the military he enlisted in. He might even have ordered the bombs dropped, or started the sequence to drop the bombs himself.

“Did you bring them here?” Cassian asks. “The Empire. Did you tell them to attack Fest?”

“It wasn’t my call,” says Zeferino.

“But you did not try to stop them.”

“I couldn’t,” says Zeferino. And then, more softly, “I wouldn’t, Cassi.”

“This is _Fest_ , Zeferino!” And Cassian is yelling and cursing in Festian, his voice shaking and twisting, because he’s shaking and twisting, has experienced more shock and horror and trauma in the last half an hour than any thirteen-year-old should ever know, and Zeferino is here, walking on dead bodies, stepping over the burning Rebellion their father built.

“This is our home, Zef!” Cassian yells. “This is where we were born, where we grew up, this is where we lived with Papa, and Mama, this is where they _died_ , Zef--”

“I make sacrifices for the Empire,” says Zeferino abruptly, also in Festian, cutting Cassian off, his voice slowly rising to match the ferocity in his brother’s. “Not unlike you and the Rebellion, I imagine. I make sacrifices, because the Empire asks me to, for the good of us all.”

“This isn’t _good_ , Zeferino,” says Cassian. “There is nothing good in your bombs, in your guns--”

“And I see nothing good in yours, Cassi!” Zeferino says. “I cannot have this argument with you, I had it so many times with Nerezza, and I will not do this with you.”

“There’s no possible way for you to explain yourself,” says Cassian.

Zeferino almost smiles. “I know you believe that, Cassi. And I want you to know that’s okay.”

“Don’t condescend to me, Zef--”

“You’re thirteen, Cassi,” says Zeferino. “Find me again when you’re older. Tell me what you think then. Perhaps you will not see things so black and white, then. Perhaps you will see that I do not have to explain myself.”

“I don’t plan to ever see you again,” says Cassian.

Zeferino frowns, turning his head, surveying Cassian from narrowed light brown eyes, the eyes that belonged to their father, the rebel, dead for seven years, more than half of Cassian’s life.

“Are you going to kill me, Cassi?”

“I should,” Cassian says, but the words stumble from him, uncertain and conflicted.

“For the greater good, right? Because someone told you to kill anyone who works for the Empire? Because you think anyone who works for the Empire deserves to die?”

Cassian stays silent, and he feels doubt curdling in his stomach.

Zeferino sighs, shaking his head.

“I will not kill you, Cassi. Do you know why?”

Cassian looks at Zeferino. It’s his turn to shake his head.

Zeferino lifts his arms, shrugging his shoulders.

“Because you’re my little brother, Cassi,” he says. “Because I love you. Because I think you have good, to do. Not for the Rebellion, but for yourself. I want you to do that.”

“You don’t know me anymore,” says Cassian.

Zeferino frowns. “Are you no longer good, Cassi?”

Distantly, Cassian thinks that Zeferino is trying to manipulate him, to con him into saying something incorrect, to doubt himself, to put blame on the Rebellion for the bombing that has occurred today. He remembers that Zeferino left Fest to join Imperial Intelligence, the elite group of soldiers turned spies for the Empire, and knows his brother probably has the skills to lie and trick his way out of any situation, including an emotional, surprising encounter with his rebel brother.

Cassian takes a deep breath, keeping his eyes locked on Zeferino’s.

He raises his pistol, but Zeferino is faster.

His brother shoots him through the right shoulder, causing Cassian to drop his pistol.

Cassian gasps, his left hand flying to his shoulder, scrabbling for the hole that has been ripped through him, and his hand comes away bloody, and he can smell burning flesh, like he did outside, but this time, it’s his own. He looks away from the injury to Zeferino, as the pain begins to swell, staring at Zeferino with wide brown eyes.

“I said I would not kill you,” says Zeferino, and his face is disturbingly empty, yet also so clearly displaying disappointment in Cassian.

And Cassian understands that like Zeferino does not know him, he does not know his brother anymore, either.

He sees no trace of the boy he grew up with, who taught him how to cook, who buckled his boots for ice boarding, who dug him out of too-deep snowdrifts, who walked him to school, who comforted him when their father died. He sees no trace of Zeferino, who helped him with his homework, who took him to the gymnasium near their house to play.

He sees no trace of his brother, who helped raise him.

Zeferino only looks at Cassian, so disappointed, and Cassian wonders what Zeferino really sees.

“I’m still based on Coruscant,” says Zeferino. “In case you ever want to speak to me. You’ll know where to find me. Goodbye, Cassi.”

And then Zeferino turns, marching back to the steel doors and disappearing out of them.

Cassian waits until he can no longer see his brother before he whimpers, gripping his shot shoulder in his hand, salty hot tears sliding down his ashen face, his own blood staining his shirt and dripping on the floor.

Distantly, he hears the sound of the Imperial ship taking off, the roar as it screeches away into the sky.

Cassian forces his legs to move.

He stumbles his way through the steel doors, and walks back into the main hangar.

People are beginning to gather, exhausted and grim-faced survivors, many grievously injured, covered in blood and ash and melting snow. A light snowfall has begun just past the hangar’s doors, and the sky is a murky, desperate sort of gray.

It is so quiet.

Cassian walks towards the crowd, scanning it for any familiar faces. He can see Travia, in her repulsor-chair, hair askew and sharp brown eyes a little dazed, but more or less okay; he finds himself surprised and a bit impressed that she did not evacuate the base. He sees Captain Nasscal, leaning over two child soldiers, girls who can only be around seven or eight years old, clutching each other, their hands stained red and their clothes singed. He recognizes Selmura, from the Mantooine mission, but Selmura is lying on the ground, staring at the hangar ceiling and blinking slowly.

And then there’s Wada, limping towards Cassian, a blaster in each hand.

“Wada,” says Cassian, and his voice is low and does not sound like his own, in his trauma and pain.

Wada only glances at Cassian’s shoulder, making sure the injury is not a fatal one.

He drops one of his blasters, and takes Cassian’s free right hand, in a stunningly gentle gesture.

It confuses Cassian. Wada expresses his affection by grasping Cassian’s shoulders, or patting Cassian’s hair, just like--

Wada’s bug-eyes are full of apology.

And Cassian knows.

He won’t hear the words.

He closes his eyes.

He breathes.

“Where,” he whispers.

“Just outside,” says Wada.

Cassian breathes.

He opens his eyes.

Cassian lets Wada’s hand slide from his cold fingers. He pries his own hand from his injured shoulder, so he can walk as straight-backed as he can, so he can walk with his head held high towards the open doors of the main hangar, to the ice plateau just outside.

She’s there, exactly where Wada said she would be.

Nerezza lies on her back, one arm raised above her head and clutching her blaster, the other angled down towards her side. She’s fallen on a thick sheet of frigid opaque ice, and red blood has formed a sort of angelic halo around her hair, having spilled from the single shot that tore through her forehead and ended her life.

Her eyes are still open, but cloudy.

She stares at the gray sky, at nothing at all.

Cassian drops to his knees, and takes her stiff hand in his own frozen ones.

“I saw Zeferino,” he whispers. “He shot me, Ezza.”

Nerezza does not respond. Cassian stares at her dark brown eyes, their mother’s eyes, _his eyes_ , and finds himself wishing that he could be lying dead on the ice next to her, that maybe if he sits still here long enough, the ice will melt and they will both slip into the water under it, and become just two more frozen and lost pieces of Fest, anonymous and forgotten and gone blissfully into dark oblivion.

“Be brave, Ezza,” he says.

He closes his eyes and pictures his sister’s fierce, focused, adoring face, staring at him, preparing to leave him in the hangar, to fight with her squad.

 _Be brave, Cassi_ , she’d said.

 _I will, Ezza. I love you_.

 _I love you too, Cassian_. _Be brave_ , says Nerezza, and then she turns and runs away from him.

 _Be brave_ , says Nerezza, and it is the last thing she ever says to Cassian.

_Be brave._

Cassian blinks, and remembers Gabriel, and the last thing he said to Cassian.

 _Be good_.

Cassian blinks again, his eyes stinging, but painfully dry.

 _Are you no longer good, Cassi?_ Zeferino asks, and then he shoots Cassian.

Cassian looks at his big sister, who is dead.

Nerezza is nineteen years old.

Nerezza _was_ nineteen years old.

Cassian is thirteen years old.

He clutches his dead sister’s hand in his.

He feels snow start to gather in his hair.

He stays out there with Nerezza for a long time.

The ice doesn’t crack. The storm moves on. The snow stops falling.

Cassian, somehow, keeps breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget: this is not a happy story.
> 
> I'm just about 600 words from the 100k word mark in this fic, which I am still writing. Cassian is 20 in the chapters I'm working on right now, which means I am still, somehow, six years away from the events of ROGUE ONE. **screaming forever**


	16. Into The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is thirteen years old when he decides to leave Fest.

Cassian is thirteen years old when he decides to leave Fest.

He decides to leave as he kneels beside his big sister’s corpse, holding her hardening and frostbitten hand, the two of them rapidly on their way to being permanently fused to the ice. Cassian doesn’t look at her as he kneels, but rather, stares across at the surrounding snowy fields and giant ice pond just past the base, downtown Fulcra shimmering in the distance.

He thinks about Fulcra, and Fest, this frigid planet he has lived on all his life. He thinks about his father, who was born and raised on Fest, and loved it; and he thinks about his mother, who was not born or raised on Fest, and tolerated it. He thinks about the years he has spent running around Fulcra, admiring and memorizing its tall stone towers and buildings, and darting around the numerous underground tunnels during intense snowstorms. He thinks about Fulcra, and how he knows it like the back of his hand, how he knows every part of it so well it’s like family.

He thinks about how all of his family is dead now.

He thinks this includes Fulcra, and Fest, in some sense.

Eventually, Wada makes his way outside to where Cassian kneels next to Nerezza’s dead body. Wada’s large black eyes take in Cassian, and he doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, but instead stands in silence, lost in his own private tribute to Nerezza. Cassian doesn’t acknowledge him. He continues to stare straight ahead, at downtown Fulcra.

Wada sighs, and bends over. Gently, using the middle of his green fingers and avoiding the suction-cup grips at the tips of them, he closes Nerezza’s eyes.

“I am very sorry, Cassian,” he says.

“Me, too,” says Cassian.

Cassian has learned that people tend to apologize for the deaths of others, even when they are in no way at fault, or even involved. He remembers the Separatists sympathizers who apologized to him after Gabriel died, and the neighbors who patted his hair and brought food to the house for the orphaned children to eat after Serafima died. He is not sure who, aside from Wada, will try to apologize for Nerezza’s death. He thinks there’s only one person who needs to apologize, and he has no interest in getting in touch with him to hear an apology, and wonders if he’ll ever even know Nerezza died today, in the attack he participated in.

Zeferino is likely well on his way back to Coruscant, but Cassian can’t spare any more thoughts for his traitorous brother, who shot him.

“We should take her inside,” says Wada, and Cassian almost smiles at the way Wada inserts himself into this family dynamic, this most private of moments.

He would insist on doing it himself, on carrying Nerezza by himself just like she spent her whole life carrying him, but his shoulder feels simultaneously burning hot and frozen over, and he knows he’d just as soon drop her as lift her, and the thought of dropping Nerezza back onto the snow and ice is more painful than he can bear.

He nods at Wada, and Wada shuffles back inside the base, leaving Cassian alone with Nerezza again for the moment.

He looks down at her, at her ghostly white face, skin entirely too pale, snow and frost prickling at the edges of her cheeks and nose and mouth, and he thinks of all the things he never got to tell her, and never will be able to now. There are no goodbyes in war, no final farewells, and Cassian will have to take all his regrets with him to the grave.

He wonders if Nerezza had any regrets. He wonders if any of them had to do with him.

“I forgive you,” he says aloud, and surprises himself.

The words feel right to him, but he can’t imagine what he’d have to forgive Nerezza for, not when she was everything to him for so long.

Perhaps he is only forgiving her for leaving him alone.

Wada returns, pushing a blood-splattered gurney Cassian might’ve seen taken out of the medical wing earlier. The memory of helping to evacuate the medical wing is already tinted gray at the edges, and feels like something from a dream, or from another life ago.

Part of Cassian wants to ask Wada for the time, but another part doesn’t think any of it matters.

Carefully, like she’s made of glass, Cassian and Wada lift Nerezza onto the gurney. Cassian’s shoulder screams at the motion, and his skin practically cracks open, breaking an almost literal sheet of ice that had covered him, he’d sat so still for so long with Nerezza.

Wada moves to push the gurney, but Cassian shakes his head, and something in his gaze must say more than Cassian ever could, for Wada quickly acquiesces to Cassian without comment or argument. He hovers at Cassian’s side, by his injured shoulder, and walks beside Cassian as he pushes Nerezza inside the dilapidated base.

The heating system has gotten knocked out, unsurprising considering the force and frequency of the bombs, and the hangar is almost as chilly as the air outside. Rebel survivors cluster in small groups, sharing blankets and towels and bandages, crouched next to small flickering fires, their eyes reflecting the flames, faces all identical masks of shock and sorrow. Heat is essential to life on Fest, and the loss of it on the Rebellion base now is a perfect metaphor of what the attack has wrought not just on Cassian, but on the Fest Rebellion as a whole.

Travia, in her repulsor-chair, intercepts Cassian and Wada and the gurney.

She looks at Nerezza’s body for a moment, eyes focused on the hole in Nerezza’s forehead. She then looks up at Cassian, at where he stands at the end of the gurney, gripping the railing in his hands.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” says Travia. “She is a tremendous loss for the Rebellion, as well, but I know your loss is greater.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” says Cassian, because this is the correct response.

She eyes him, taking in the blaster wound in his shoulder.

“Get that shoulder looked at, Sergeant Andor,” she says.

“Yes ma’am,” says Cassian.

Travia nods, and her eyes flicker to Wada, at Cassian’s side. She nods at him, and Wada nods back, and they seem to communicate something in a language Cassian doesn’t care to understand. He’s back to looking at Nerezza, upside down to him now, and all he can see is that hole in her head.

Wada gently pushes Cassian’s shoulder. “Let’s keep moving.”

Wada shows Cassian the makeshift mortuary they’re using for the time being; it’s the repair shop, where Cassian has spent many long hours listening to and watching Wada work on various ships, droids, and other bits of assorted, damaged technology. Cassian carefully navigates the gurney around stacks of broken metal and stacks of dead bodies, letting Wada guide him towards the corner Wada had appropriated for his own work space.

Cassian remembers being twelve years old, and learning to reprogram a protocol droid here.

Cassian is now thirteen years old, and this is where he stops the gurney holding his dead sister’s body.

He and Wada gently lift Nerezza again, and lay her out on the workbench, and Cassian takes care to make sure her arms are resting alongside her sides, that her hair is somewhat neat, that she looks like she could be taking a nap in an atypical, inadvisable location, save for that hole in her head that ruins the facade.

Wada grips Cassian’s uninjured shoulder. “Let’s get your shoulder fixed, Cassian.”

“We can’t leave her here,” says Cassian.

“Yes, we can,” says Wada, and he sounds kinder than perhaps he has ever been, and it just makes everything that much worse. “Come. Nerezza would not like to see you in pain like this.”

“Nerezza’s dead,” says Cassian, even though Wada is clearly aware of this.

“Yes, she is. She will be okay here.”

Wada leaves it at that, and Cassian finally allows himself to be moved. He looks at the floor as Wada leads them out of the repair shop, down corridors that are still largely unlit, filled with sparse flickering white light, and terribly quiet.

Cassian still cannot feel anything, and while he’s fairly sure it’s due to kneeling outside on the ice for so long, he also knows it’s the shock of Nerezza’s death, and the shock of being shot by Zeferino.

“Wada,” says Cassian, softly.

“Yes, Cassian?”

Cassian licks his lips, which are chapped and bleeding a little with the cold air. “My brother was here.”

This gets Wada’s attention. The Rodian stops, and he turns, so he’s standing in front of Cassian, black bug eyes focused and huge, and Cassian can see his reflection in them. His face is bloody and coloring with fresh bruises, and his clothes are torn in places, and all of him is coated in a layer of gray ash and melting snow.

“With the Empire?” Wada asks.

“Yes,” says Cassian. He nods towards his injured shoulder. “He shot me.”

“He… _He_ shot you?”

Wada sounds angry, and when Cassian nods in confirmation, he lets loose a long string of curses in colorful, spitting Rodian, and Cassian can’t understand a single syllable but gets the general gist of the thing anyway. He waits for Wada to finish, blinking slowly, exhausted and cold to his core.

“I am very sorry, Cassian,” says Wada.

“You already said that,” says Cassian.

“You lost your brother and your sister in one day. I cannot be sorry enough, little one.”

Wada steers Cassian to the weaponry, which seems to have become the new medical wing. The room is tight, and windowless, meaning it’s the warmest room in the entire base, and so perhaps this new designation is not entirely inexplicable. Cassian sits in the chair Wada points him to, and waits.

He passes out before Wada can find a doctor.

The next week is the longest of Cassian’s life.

He wakes up sometime in the middle of a second round of bacta, his shoulder hot, his skin knitting itself together. He learns that the shot was relatively clean, that he passed out due to the shock and blood loss, that he somehow managed to escape infection, even after sitting outside, wound exposed, for so long. The doctor expresses enthusiasm, calls Cassian lucky, but quiets up at the look in Cassian’s eyes.

Nerezza’s body is still in the repair shop.

Rebel technicians are working on hooking up a new, temporary heating system around the most critical parts of the base, carefully leaving the repair shop out of the equation. The repair shop remains largely undisturbed, as Travia, and Sids (who survived the bombing, returning to the base about an hour after the Empire cleared out, bringing with him a wave of shellshocked survivors who’d been pursued across the ice plateau by stormtroopers) work to contact the immediate family of all of the dead, which are eventually counted to be seven-hundred and eighty-eight rebels.

It’s the single bloodiest day in the history of the Fest Rebellion, and one of the bloodiest days in the entire history of Fest, but that is the kind of thing that gets left out of Imperial history books.

Cassian pulls himself together enough to report Specialist Nonia Chinzano as dead in the bombings. In the report he writes for the Fest Rebellion records, he notes where she died, and reports that her body might very well be destroyed beyond identification, but that her tricopper bracelet could possibly be used to identify her.

In the report he writes for Nonia’s parents, he describes how Nonia died in the medical wing while helping to evacuate it, even though she herself could easily have been among the evacuees. He writes that she smiled moments before she died. He says she was content, because he thinks this is what parents want to hear upon learning of their only surviving child’s death.

Privately, he does not think Nonia died content; he thinks she died unfinished, as all the rebels do.

Travia reads the report, and calls Cassian into her office.

“I know you were not her commanding officer,” she says, “But you were there when she died. Would you tell her parents, for the Rebellion?”

And Cassian agrees, because he can’t say no to the Rebellion.

And because he feels guilty, so guilty, because Nonia died, and he could’ve forced her out of the medical wing. He should have.

Nonia is quickly cremated, her body far too gruesome to be presentable to her grieving parents. Cassian picks up a tiny pile of personal effects, including her favorite shiny blue scarf, her flight jacket, and the ever present tricopper bracelet.

Cassian doesn’t ever have to tell her parents she died. He simply drops the bracelet into Nonia’s mother’s hand, and they know.

He thinks of how he knew Nerezza was dead before Wada could ever say the words. For him, it was Wada’s silence, and a comforting gesture. For Nonia’s parents, it’s the unknown thirteen-year-old boy, and the tricopper bracelet.

They tell him that they do not blame the Rebellion for Nonia’s death. They _thank him_ , for bringing back the tricopper bracelet, and the ashes of Nonia’s body, and for telling them what happened.

It’s a generosity Cassian doesn’t know what to do with.

Nerezza’s body is still in the repair shop.

Viri returns to the base, her mission cut short when the news of the bombing came in, and she spends an hour sitting quietly next to Nerezza. She finds Cassian afterwards, and hugs him tightly. Her blue skin seems paler than normal, and she looks cold, even bundled up tightly in a thick winter coat.

“I’m sorry, Cassi,” she says in her Rylothian accent, and she’s the first person since Nerezza died to call him that, and he swallows down his tears.

“She was going to make Rycrit stew for you,” says Cassian. “She practiced. It was really good.”

Viri laughs, and her two tentacles twitch with the movement. “Oh, Ezza. I would like to have tried it.”

She’s planning on throwing herself into helping the Rebellion find a new base, refusing to stop moving, because it’s what Nerezza would have done. She tells Cassian to have dinner with her the next night, that she’ll make him some other hot Rylothian food, because she was going to make some for Nerezza anyway, but now it’ll just be her and Cassian, and that’s the best they can do.

He agrees.

She makes Gruuvan _shaal_ , a dish of lizard meat and assorted Rylothian vegetables. It’s good, but it tastes oddly ashy, and Viri and Cassian are quiet, eating with the weight of the silence made by the empty chair sitting next to them, swallowing food and waiting for the laughter and voice of someone they will never hear again.

Nerezza’s body is still in the repair shop.

Cassian returns to the apartment, another victim of the bombing. He has to smash the door down to get inside, and the first things he sees are the remains of the dinner Nerezza worked so hard to cook and get right, abandoned and rancid and coated in dust and stone. He steps carefully over bits of ceiling and wall, avoiding the shattered glass that was the mirror, the splinters of wood that was the closet.

Cassian and Nerezza never had a lot, but looking at the apartment now, he thinks they had nothing at all.

He sinks down onto his bed, and looks around the destroyed apartment.

It’s so quiet.

He gathers everything he can salvage, dumping it onto Nerezza’s bed. He tugs their clothes out of the closet and drawers, digs their boots out of the rubble lining the floor, and scrapes out the items they kept under the beds. He finds his hologram projector, and he looks at it, and he knows he does need to tell Taraja what happened to the Fest Rebellion.

He’ll need to say goodbye.

Because Cassian is leaving Fest. He decided to leave the second he saw the hole in Nerezza’s head, like she decided she would not be going back to school when she saw ten-year-old Cassian clutching Serafima’s corpse.

For so long, the Fest Rebellion base was home to Cassian, just like home was Fulcra, just like home was Fest. It is only now that Nerezza is dead does Cassian realize that none of these things had really been home. It is only now that Cassian understands that _Nerezza_ was home.

Everything else, these other places, are just settings.

He fixes the apartment up as best as he can, for whoever lives in it next, and then he calls Taraja.

She greets him, and stops, because she can tell just by looking at him that something terrible has happened.

Cassian’s mirror is broken, or else he’d hurry to see what it is about his face that is making people change their minds about speaking to him. He wants to see this expression he’s been making lately, memorize the look, so he can have it as a tool, to be applied in future situations.

“The Empire destroyed the base,” says Cassian, to a stunned Taraja.

“They bombed everything, and then they sent stormtroopers to pick the survivors off. We evacuated three-hundred and fifty-six soldiers and leaders, and then a hundred and twelve survived the attack on the base. We lost seven-hundred and eighty-eight people in total.”

“Kriff, Cass,” says Taraja, and she’s shaking her head, her blue eyes so wide in horror and sympathy.

“My sister died,” says Cassian.

As soon as he says the words, he decides he never wants to say them again.

But he spoke of Nerezza often enough to Taraja that she would ask, if he hadn’t told her.

“I’m so sorry,” says Taraja.

“I wanted you to know,” says Cassian. “I’m leaving Fest. And I wanted to say goodbye.”

Taraja sits in silence for a moment, and Cassian finds he cannot look at her anymore. He focuses instead on the window above Nerezza’s bed, where the glass has been blown out, and a bitterly cold wind is blowing inside the small apartment.

“Where will you go?” Taraja asks.

“I don’t know yet,” says Cassian. “Maybe somewhere warm.”

“Mantooine?”

That makes him look at her. She stares back, shoulders tense, face open and inviting, and it would be easy, so easy, to go to Mantooine.

“That’s too far from the Empire,” says Cassian. “I need to get closer to it.”

And Taraja, because she is so like him, because she gets him, she only nods.

“Of course,” she says. “Shoot those bastards a second time for me, okay?”

Cassian nods, and he almost smiles, which is the highest compliment he could ever give Taraja, and she might even know that.

“I’ll try to stay in touch,” he says. “But…”

But Cassian is going to leave the Atrivis Sector, and the further he gets from the Atrivis Sector, the less likely it is he’ll be able to reach Taraja on Mantooine, not while staying on coded channels, and not staying on coded channels is an impossibility.

“I understand,” says Taraja. She shrugs her shoulders. “Until we meet again, yes?”

It’s the last thing she said to him, the last time (and the first time) they saw each other in person.

“You think we will?” Cassian asks, and he feels something churning in his gut, something he can feel, a welcome change from the last few days.

“I have hope,” says Taraja.

Of course. Hope. That’s what Cassian is feeling. He’d almost forgotten it.

“Hope is all I have left,” he says, and it sounds more melancholic than he’d intended.

“Then you must let it carry you,” says Taraja. She pauses, and then speaks in Mantooian, and Cassian recognizes it as the farewell message she said to him outside the Port of Mazl, when they last saw each other, two years ago.

He mimics her, offering the same message in Festian.

“Good luck, Cassian Andor,” says Taraja. “May you find the revenge you seek.”

“Until we meet again,” says Cassian, repeating her words. “Goodbye, Taraja.”

“Goodbye, Cassian.”

Taraja’s face flutters out of sight.

Cassian breathes.

Nerezza’s body is still in the repair shop.

He approaches Travia and Sids, as they work to find a new location for the Fest Rebellion, with his resignation from the Fest Rebellion in hand.

Neither of them are surprised by it.

Like Taraja, they ask where he’s planning to go, but unlike Taraja, they have to ask if he’ll ever work for the Rebellion again.

“Not on Fest,” says Cassian. “But I’m not going to stop fighting the Empire.”

Cassian can’t imagine doing anything else, but he also knows there is so much he’d rather be doing. It’s just that the Rebellion, this cause, this war; this is it for him. It’s who he is. He’ll never give it up. He will die for it, sooner rather than later, he imagines.

Travia seems to infer this from his response. She hands him a datapad, and when he turns it on, he’s greeted with his own face, and his records, details of his missions and his work for the Fest Rebellion, all seven years of it.

It’s a recommendation letter. It’s the most honorable of honorable discharges.

He looks up at her.

“If you need anything from us,” she says, “Don’t hesitate to get in touch.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” says Cassian.

Sids shakes his hand, grip sure and bruising.

“Thank you for your service, Sergeant Andor,” he says.

“Thank you, sir,” says Cassian.

He salutes Travia, and the Icewoman stares at him, before nodding.

“You’re dismissed, Sergeant Andor,” she says.

Cassian walks out of the room without looking back.

He has one more thing to do before he can leave Fest.

He has to bury his sister.

He takes Nerezza’s body out of the repair shop at last.

He gets a lift from a soldier back to the pit just outside his old house, where Gabriel and Serafima are buried. The land is public, or at least not privately owned, and so no one disturbs Cassian as he tears through the ice and snow to create a space for Nerezza alongside their parents.

Her body has long since stiffened, and has begun to smell, and so Cassian doesn’t open the thin gray metal box she’s been put in. He carefully moves it into the pit, and immediately proceeds to cover it in displaced dirt and frost.

He works in silence, alone.

He thinks of how he told Nerezza that he forgave her for things unknown, but now he thinks he needs to receive some kind of absolution as well.

But there is no one out there, no one left, and so Cassian buries his sister, smoothing the top of her grave over with white snow, and then sitting back on his heels, looks at this new plot next to the older markers belonging to Gabriel and Serafima.

They don’t say much; just their names, and dates of birth and death. He looks at the markers, eyes darting from Gabriel Andor to Serafima Andor and last to Nerezza Andor, and then he looks at all the empty space around them, and he pictures a grave marker for Cassian Andor there too, and the image is far more comforting than it really should be.

Cassian has thought of his own death many times, has pictured it on a near daily basis. He doesn’t know how, when or where he’ll die, and he doesn’t know if he’ll care what happens to his body after he dies, isn’t sure he believes in an afterlife or total oblivion. He doesn’t know how much any of it matters; dead is dead, he reasons.

Cassian is thirteen years old.

His still-healing shoulder aches in the cold air. Cassian takes his gloves off, and runs his bare hands over each marker in farewell.

“Goodbye, Ezza,” he murmurs. “Goodbye, Mama. Goodbye, Papa.”

He gets to his feet. He walks away.

Cassian plans to catch a ride on the first transport headed off-planet that he can find at the Port, and so he gets up the next morning, a week after Nerezza died, a week after Zeferino shot him, a week after the Fest Rebellion base was destroyed, and gathers his things together. All of his possessions can fit into a single bag; his clothes, his records with the Fest Rebellion, the hologram projector, a book to read while he travels, with the flowers from Garqi pressed in the pages, and then a piece of Serafima’s pottery, a knife that belonged to Gabriel, and one of Nerezza’s scarves. He makes sure he has the Rodian pistol from Wada, grabs his flight jacket, and opens the door to the apartment, pausing to take it in one last time.

It looks like no one has ever lived there.

He closes the door.

Cassian has just stepped off the base, has begun the walk to the Port, when he hears his name. He turns.

It’s Wada.

He stands there, arms crossed, thin mouth pressed tightly shut in a disapproving way.

“You were going to leave without saying goodbye, little one?”

Cassian shrugs, guilty. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“Uh huh. Where are you going to go?”

“Anywhere,” says Cassian, not to be dramatic but because it’s the truth.

Wada sighs, and walks over to Cassian, looking up at the sky. It isn’t snowing, but the sky is that ever-present dull gray that swallows and drowns Fest, cloudy and bleak.

“You know, I never liked living under all this gray,” he says. “Maybe I should change that.”

“You don’t have to do this,” says Cassian.

Wada laughs, his reed-like, wheezing little laugh. “Cassian, did you never consider that you are a big part of why I have stayed on Fest for so long?”

“No,” says Cassian, honestly.

“I said once that your sister and I have a lot in common,” says Wada. “If you had ever told her that you wanted to leave Fest, she would have gone with you in a heartbeat. Of course I will go with you, little one.”

“I don’t know where I’m going,” says Cassian, and his voice betrays his fear.

Because he’s scared. He’s only ever left Fest for missions, and always with others, and he was never away for long. And he always knew he’d get to come home, to see Nerezza again, to sleep in his own bed on the Fest Rebellion base. What he’s doing now is going into the unknown, and his only plan is to take down as much of the Empire as he can before they catch him.

Wada grips Cassian’s good shoulder tightly.

“Allow me to make a suggestion,” he says. “Rodia is lovely. You will like the green. And the warmth. A nice change from this cold and gray, yes? Plus, I am sure my family would like to meet you, after all I have told them about you.”

Cassian frowns. “I don’t know, it isn’t involved enough with the Empire, I need--”

He needs to fight the Empire. He needs to hit it, and bite it, to tear it apart and see it crumble under his hands. He needs this, he needs a place to put his rage and his heartbreak, and Rodia is too far from the Empire for this.

Wada understands.

“We won’t stay for long,” says Wada. “But you need time to grieve, Cassian, and that does not just include grieving your sister and your brother, but also Fest. You will mourn leaving this planet, for a long time. You must understand that, before you do anything else. Right now, you just want to run, Cassian. We will run to Rodia, and then we will pause, so you can breathe, okay?”

Cassian can see the logic in it, and he has always wanted to visit Rodia, and he thinks he’d get a kick out of meeting Wada’s family.

“Just for a little bit,” he says.

“Just for a little bit,” Wada agrees. “Come back inside. We’ll take my ship.”

Cassian nods, and lets Wada lead him back inside the Fest Rebellion base, the pieces and shambles of it, the ice plateau at their backs.

“Can I pilot?” Cassian asks.

Wada nods. “I could use the sleep. Don’t break my ship.”

Cassian rolls his eyes, and Wada laughs again.

They climb into Wada’s ship, and Cassian discovers that Wada has already packed all his things, and prepared the ship for extended travel. He glances at Wada, considers asking, but thinks it doesn’t matter. He’s on the ship now, and they’re going to Rodia, and that’s all that matters.

Wada does fall asleep, almost as soon as he settles into the co-pilot’s chair.

Cassian guides the ship up, feels the lurch as they leave the earth behind and take to the air. He watches the Fest Rebellion base shrink beneath him until it disappears entirely, and then he looks at Fulcra, at the gleaming dark towers and buildings, shades of black and white and stone, and then he flies into the clouds and the city is gone and all that’s left is Fest.

He realizes he hasn’t been breathing, and Cassian gulps a quick breath as they burst into the atmosphere.

Cassian is thirteen years old.

He takes one last look at Fest, and sees mountains, and valleys, and cities, all in shades of muted, uncertain gray.

He looks at the grays, and in spite of it all, in spite of everything, he gets a glimpse of home.

But then he blinks, and Fest is just a planet, covered in gray areas.

He watches it disappear.

He turns to the stars, to deep space, to the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronologically speaking, this is the halfway point of this story, as Cassian dies when he's 26. But regarding length, this is very much nowhere near the halfway point of the story. I've been writing exceptionally long chapters lately, and I'm past 100k, so.
> 
> But yeah! "Halfway"! If you're liking it so far, feel free to drop me a line, as always.


	17. Think Like A Rebel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s a teenager, fourteen years old.
> 
> He’s in Coruscant, and he’s working on tearing the heart of the Empire out at the source.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the large blocks of text in italics in this chapter, I just could not find a way around it, not without sacrificing this opening scene.

The woman has bright red hair, a color not dissimilar to molten lava, and pale blue skin that almost lets her blend into the back of the booth she’s sitting in. Her eyes are slitted, and yellow, and she looks at Cassian like she’s trying to decide if she wants to eat him alive, or shove him into an escape pod that will take him off Coruscant.

Her name is Atheenia, and she supposedly knows of an off-the-radar path that leads into an Imperial warehouse stuffed full of ammunition and bombs.

“Where did you come from?” She asks him, yellow eyes still studying him so fervently, like she can pluck out his story just from his appearance.

Over her shoulder, Cassian watches a convoy of Imperial ships fly over the diner, probing and analyzing CoCo Town, studying its inhabitants and citizens and looking for the rebels that proliferate the district.

Cassian is one of them. He’s a teenager, fourteen years old.

He’s in Coruscant, and he’s working on tearing the heart of the Empire out at the source.

“Rodia,” he says.

_True to their agreement, Cassian and Wada only spend a week on Rodia. Cassian meets Wada’s family, which these days consists only of his sister and two nephews; Wada’s parents have been dead for decades, while Wada’s other three siblings have died in the last fifteen or so years._

_Wada’s sister, Geeta, is standing outside her home on Betu, a continent on Rodia, when Cassian and Wada arrive. Cassian barely notices her, as focused as he is on taking in the huge domes that blanket the cities and settlements of Rodia. The air on Rodia is breathable, but the environment is vicious and fierce and the domes help protect the buildings and homes from the fearsome climate. Fest had a similar situation with its people and its environment, but the Festians built tunnels underground to travel in, while the Rodians have simply enveloped their cities in clear domes for protection._

_Rodia is hot, but unlike Mantooine, it’s a humid, wet heat. And unlike Mantooine, and Fest, the planet is wrapped in huge oceans, and swamps, and massive jungles that cover entire continents._

_Cassian has Wada take over piloting so he can stare out the window, his face all but pressed against the glass, so eager is he to see as much of the new planet as he can. For a moment, he forgets Fest, forgets the heartbreak and anger that has brought him to Rodia; for a moment, he’s simply a child, the child he never really got to be._

_Geeta’s two sons, Kolvo and Gik, come running out of the house to greet the ship, and Cassian hangs back on the gangplank, unwilling to disturb the family reunion. Wada’s nephews are obviously young, and though Cassian is completely lost when it comes to estimating the ages of Rodians, he’s fairly sure they’re both younger than him. He listens to their clicks and chirps as they speak in Rodian, and he has no idea what they’re saying, but the way their small, rounded ears twitch and flick indicate happiness._

_Wada turns away from his sister and waves his arm. “Come here, Cassian.”_

_Cassian shuffles towards them. Geeta is as tall as Wada, but where Wada’s bug-eyes are pitch black, hers seem to be a shade of incredibly dark blue. She’s dressed in a bright orange shirt and brown trousers, and puts her hands on her hips, surveying Cassian as he approaches._

_“You said he was young,” she says in Basic, presumably for Cassian’s benefit, though she looks at Wada as she speaks._

_“He is,” says Wada._

_Cassian stops beside them, looking between the two Rodians with confusion. He’s still about three inches shorter than Wada, but Wada isn’t very tall to begin with. And Cassian knows that Wada is definitely older than him by quite a bit; he’s never been able to get an actual age or birthdate out of Wada, but from the way Wada describes the Old Republic and certain kinds of technology, Cassian has guessed that Wada is at least four decades older than Cassian._

_And Cassian is thirteen years old, which is young by most standards, certainly human and Rodian among them._

_“Young in age,” says Geeta. She holds out her hand, and Cassian takes it, feeling the suction cups at the end of her long, green Rodian fingers wrap around his hand. She makes a clicking noise, either language in Rodian or a universal noise for dissent. “But not young in the face. You’ve seen a lot, Cassian Andor.”_

_“Yes, ma’am,” says Cassian, because he cannot possibly disagree._

_“It’s a cute face,” she adds, and Wada laughs._

_Kolvo and Gik are nervous around Cassian, and Wada tells him it’s because they’ve never actually met a human before, only seen them occasionally in the nearby city. Cassian sits still and lets them touch his face, his hair, his hands, and his feet, listening to their clicks and chirps as they compare their own features with his. They clearly don’t really know what to make of him, though to be fair, Cassian doesn’t know what to make of himself either._

_He feels like he’s drifting._

_Rodia is beautiful, just as Wada always told him it was. But the humidity and the domes are suffocating._

_Cassian doesn’t spend a lot of time inside Geeta’s house, instead preferring to explore the jungle that surrounds it. Fest wasn’t home to any fauna to speak of, and he finds himself entranced by the millions of shades of green and brown that he encounters. There are birds and frogs everywhere he turns, and he spends hours sitting in the thick undergrowth and listening to the nature around him, staring at his bare arms, taking in the way the sunlight settles into his tan brown skin._

_Wada warns Cassian against venturing into any swamps, mentioning the Kwazel Maws and Ghests that inhabit the murky waters there. He doesn’t know the right words in Basic to describe the creatures properly, but the way Geeta shudders and Kolvo and Gik shriek say more than any words ever could._

_Cassian thinks the snakes he encounters in the jungles are bad enough._

_Still, he wanders, and lingers, and thinks. There is nothing about Rodia that should remind him of Fest, nothing about the greens and smells and creatures that should remind him of Nerezza and Zeferino, nothing about the noises of running water and soft wind that should remind him of bombs and battle. But he still somehow finds himself thinking of the Rebellion, and the war, and all the things he wants to be doing._

_He’s restless. He’s ready to strike back._

_He approaches Wada after five days, and says he’s ready to leave._

_Wada looks at him from where he’s scrubbing dishes. Kolvo and Gik are playing outside, chasing each other in circles through the tall grass, while Geeta sits nearby, polishing her pistol. Cassian doesn’t know what Geeta does; Wada hasn’t told him, and Geeta has not volunteered the information herself, and Cassian is uninterested in asking her any invasive questions._

_Wada sets down the bowl he was cleaning. “Where to, then, Cassian?”_

_Cassian finally has an answer, but he isn’t eager to share it, knowing how Wada will likely respond._

_He goes for it anyway: “Coruscant.”_

_Coruscant. Also known as the Imperial Center, and the capital of the Old Republic. Located deep among the Core Worlds, towards the center of the galaxy. A planet that is a single, enormous city, Galactic City, the definition of cosmopolitan, home to the headquarters of just about every organization and government that has ever existed in the galaxy, from the Jedi Temple to the current Imperial body of government._

_Going to Coruscant would be entering the belly of the beast that is the Empire._

_Going to Coruscant could very possibly be tantamount to suicide._

_Wada exhales, his mouth twisting as he considers Cassian’s request, and what it means for him._

_“You don’t have to come,” says Cassian, quickly._

_He wouldn’t blame Wada for choosing to stay on Rodia, with Geeta, and her sons. Cassian would absolutely understand. Especially if the other option is to go to Coruscant._

_“I said I would go with you,” says Wada._

_“You said you’d leave Fest with me,” says Cassian. “Coruscant is--”_

_“An inevitability,” says Wada. “It makes perfect sense. I am not surprised that you want to go there.”_

_“But…?”_

_Wada shrugs. “Nothing. We will go.”_

“You are not from Rodia,” says Atheenia, frowning.

“Not originally, no,” says Cassian, because he clearly isn’t from Rodia, and there isn’t much of a point in pretending to be as much with someone whose trust he’s eager to gain.

Atheenia considers his honesty, and Cassian prepares for her to ask him where he’s originally from. She ends up surprising him.

“How did you come to be in CoCo Town?” She asks.

CoCo Town is no more dangerous to rebels than any other part of the Imperial City; if anything, it might actually be safer. The rebels of Coruscant and the Empire seem to be perpetually locked in a struggle to take over this particular sector of the city, and more often than not, the rebels seem to be winning. None of them appear to be part of any actual Rebellion group, however; rather, they’re residents of a district that simply hate the Empire and just want it to leave them alone.

That’s the assumption Cassian is currently operating under. He has yet to find any singular Rebellion on Coruscant. The planet’s population is supposedly close to one trillion, and he can’t imagine trying to organize anything with similarly huge numbers. The Fest Rebellion is small, but completely manageable, and Cassian knows that’s why it’s been able to last so long.

Assuming it’s survived the bombing.

It’s been four months since Cassian left Fest, four months since the Empire bombed the base headquarters, four months since Nerezza died.

In the back of his mind, Cassian knows Zeferino is likely on Coruscant at this moment.

Nothing could convince him to seek his brother out.

“It seemed like a good place to start,” says Cassian, answering her question.

“To start, by gathering ammunition and bombs? What will you do with those?”

Cassian looks at her. “Plenty.”

And she _laughs_. Her face breaks into a huge grin, her yellow eyes widening in sudden delight. Atheenia has a whistling cackle of a laugh, and Cassian feels himself reddening, both in embarrassment at her laughing at him, and at the attention the loudness of her cackle is drawing to them. He can feel other diner patrons turning towards them, wondering about the blue-skinned woman laughing so fervently at the skinny fourteen-year-old boy.

Cassian glances towards the exits, the back door leading to the kitchen and the front door leading back to the busy streets of CoCo Town.

He feels his spine straightening, his body preparing to flee should Atheenia turn on him.

He doesn’t know her at all; he’s only able to meet with her through another contact of his, a bounty hunter who called herself Gwen when Cassian met her on Fest. Gwen had been in-between jobs when she’d run into the Fest Rebellion, via Cassian, who’d been eleven years old at the time. Gwen had been charmed by his enthusiasm, and his resilience, and she’d followed him to base to hear what Travia and Sids had had to say. She hadn’t been able to stay on Fest, hadn’t wanted to, really, but had given Cassian her contact information should he ever need her help.

_Wada is less than thrilled when Cassian mentions contacting Gwen to see about rebels on Coruscant, where she was based. The vast majority of Rodians end up becoming bounty hunters, or assassins, and Wada understands better than most of the galaxy how bounty hunters work and was skeptical that Gwen would not only agree to help Cassian, but wouldn’t end up killing him._

_“Bounty hunters are not to be trusted,” he says, but he still flies with Cassian to Coruscant, and he still goes to meet Gwen with Cassian in an alley in CoCo Town late at night._

_But Gwen sticks to her word. She shakes Cassian’s hand with enthusiasm, and Wada’s with wariness, and gave Cassian a short list of Coruscantians working against the Empire on the planet._

_“I don’t know how you do it,” Wada says, grumbling, and eyeing Gwen as she gets on her speeder._

_“Do what?” Cassian asks._

_“Get people to trust you, to want to help you.”_

_“Maybe it’s my cute face,” Cassian says, parroting Geeta’s words. Wada laughs, but doesn’t disagree_.

Atheenia’s hand on his arm snaps Cassian out of his escape route planning, and he looks up at her. Her yellow eyes are still mirthful, but seem to also be displaying some kind of acknowledgment, or decision.

“I will help you, Cassian Andor,” she says at last.

“Why?” Cassian snaps, in spite of himself. He instantly regrets it, wondering if his biting tone will be enough to make her change her mind.

Atheenia’s bright red nails dig into his arm, threatening to pierce his jacket.

“Because I see your fire,” she says. “I see you mean what you say. You would take on the entire Empire by yourself, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” says Cassian, because he would.

He’s only ever fought as part of a group, has never really been a leader, save for the handful of missions on Fest that he was commanded to lead. But he’s changed in the last four months since he’s left Fest. He might even have changed in the hour that spanned from eating dinner with Nerezza to finding her dead body outside the main hangar of the base.

Cassian is fourteen years old, and borderline suicidally desperate to see the Empire obliterated.

“You will die fighting, alone,” says Atheenia.

“I’m not alone, I--”

“--You have the Rodian, yes, I see,” says Atheenia. Wada is sitting in a booth on the other side of the diner. Cassian has his back to him, but if Atheenia was able to infer that Wada was there watching them, then he clearly hasn’t been doing a good job at appearing nonchalant and inconspicuous.

Though, to be fair, Cassian probably didn’t help his cause when he said he’d come to Coruscant from Rodia.

“A Rodian and a… human,” says Atheenia, and her uncertainty at how to classify Cassian tells him that she’s never been to Fest, or even the Atrivis Sector, if she cannot place his homeworld by his accent. “A Rodian and a human will not last long on Coruscant, against the Empire. Not if they want to make any kind of difference in this war.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

Atheenia grins, and Cassian sees that her teeth are an unnaturally pearly white, and deadly sharp. Here is someone who may have literally torn a bit of the Empire apart.

“It’s all about where you go,” she says. “I will show you. Come.”

She stands in a single, fluid movement, and Cassian hastens to follow. He can feel Wada’s bug-eyes on his back as he follows Atheenia out of the diner, but he makes no move to signal to Wada, to tell Wada to remain put. Wada might try to follow them, and he might not.

Atheenia leads Cassian to her transport, an airspeeder, compact but sleek and red, almost the exact shade as her hair. She climbs in and Cassian follows, sliding into the passenger seat. He feels anxiety and nervousness in his belly, knows very well that Atheenia might possibly be taking him somewhere to kill him, or hand him off to the Empire for some unknown sum; Cassian himself is not wanted (as far as he’s aware) but he is a rebel, and that’s enough for Coruscanti police.

“Where are we going, Atheenia?” He asks, as the airspeeder takes off, jolting into the smoggy Coruscant air.

“Where the war is,” says Atheenia, a statement that offers absolutely nothing, but somehow, explains everything.

Coruscant has, for the most part, been left untouched by the war. Cassian knows it’s because the Empire is housed on the planet, including the Emperor himself, and that it’s imperative for the success of the Empire that the wealthiest people in the galaxy live in relative peace. He still finds the stable mobility of Coruscant, the lack of explosions and blaster fire and screaming civilians, to be completely unbelievable. He stares out of the airspeeder, looking at the advertisements that shout at him from gleaming screens around the city, surrounded on all sides by colorful, beaming faces of all species.

The Empire is not sympathetic to aliens. But it’s important that they pretend to be.

Abruptly, Atheenia turns the nose of the airspeeder down, sending them spiraling towards the ground. She lands in an unobtrusive, largely unnoticeable, side alley, a shopping mall dominating the buildings around them. Cassian follows her out of the airspeeder, but pauses when he sees Atheenia seems to be walking towards solid, unremarkable, gray stone wall.

She realizes he’s stopped walking and turns, blinking slowly at him. “Coming?”

“What is this?” Cassian asks.

“Think like a rebel, Cassian Andor,” she says. “And ask yourself this: how do rebels move, and do battle, in a planet gripped tightly by the Empire?”

Cassian can only stare.

Atheenia smiles, but it’s that sharp, predatory grin from earlier that does nothing to calm Cassian’s mounting anxiety, the sense of danger looming in his gut. “I do not know where you are from,” she says, “But I hope you are not too fond of the sun.”

And with that she turns, and presses a panel on the alley wall that blends seamlessly into the gray stone. There’s a soft beeping noise, and then a hiss, and two doors slide open, revealing a dark elevator lit by a single white light in the ceiling.

“We fight in the shadows, here on Coruscant,” Atheenia says, stepping inside. She turns, one hand holding the doors open in a clear invitation. “Do you think you can do that?”

It’s Cassian’s turn to smile, because he’s from Fest. He’s spent his whole life living in the shadow of a dim sun, spent his whole life navigating dark tunnels underground, and spent seven years fighting for a Rebellion that operated on a cold, gray planet. Certainly, he’s prepared for this.

(He isn’t. But there’s no way he could be.)

Cassian is fourteen years old.

He walks forward, and steps into the elevator next to Atheenia. The doors slide closed, and Cassian hears a mechanical whirring, as it begins to drop.

“Welcome to the Coruscant Underworld, Cassian Andor,” says Atheenia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rodia and CoCo Town descriptions via Wookiepedia. CoCo Town appears in ATTACK OF THE CLONES, as the district that houses Dex's Diner, where Obi-Wan goes to find out about the bounty hunter dart. It might appear in the animated series (one or more) too but I don't know.
> 
> The Coruscant Underworld is also a "canon" thing and will feature heavily in the coming chapters of this story!


	18. The Underworld

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is fourteen years old, and for the first time, really feels like he’s a rebel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've added chapter titles! For my convenience mostly, because I have no idea what chapter anything is and going back to my work has been confusing.

Cassian is fourteen years old, and for the first time, really feels like he’s a rebel.

He thinks this, as he sits next to Wada, carefully putting together the pieces and chemicals that make up a detonite bomb. He thinks this, as he follows Atheenia to Level 5000 in the Coruscant Underworld, where Coruscant’s central power distribution grid is located, so they can survey it, see how it’s hooked up, and maybe discover a way to unhinge it. He thinks this, as Atheenia introduces him to scarred face after scarred face, people and aliens who have been fighting this underground war on Coruscant since before the Republic fell, back when it was the Republic versus the Separatists.

People who had regular, good jobs that they left in order to take on what would eventually become the Empire.

Cassian has only ever known the war, has only really ever known life under the Empire, and finds himself utterly fascinated by the people who knew the galaxy before it all.

Isa is a fifty-seven year old woman with hair so light it’s an illuminating white, and skin that’s almost as pale. She says she’s so pale because she’s spent the past seven years almost exclusively in the dark, almost literally underground, ever since the Republic fell seven years ago. She was a steward back then, flying on beautiful, high class ships across the galaxy, waiting on extremely rich people who vacationed on luxury liners that only ever took them around the Core Worlds, carefully never going beyond the Inner Rim.

“It was a good life,” she says. “Being a steward doesn’t sound terribly glamorous, but I traveled, I saw the most lovely and idyllic planets in the galaxy… It was peaceful. But the Republic fell, and I… I had to do something.”

She’s been fighting ever since. Her family are all Imperial loyalists, and she hasn’t spoken to any of them since the Empire rose. She’s been living in the Coruscant Underworld, moving from level to level whenever the Empire sends probes to explore and search out rebels who might be living and hiding in the undercity.

This is a frequent occurrence.

The Empire is savvy enough to understand that the rebels of Coruscant live in the Underworld, almost literally forced underground due to the strength of the Imperial surveillance that permeates the streets on the surface of Coruscant.

Cassian quickly learns two things about the Coruscant Underworld:

One: it’s huge. There are 5,127 levels to the Coruscant Underworld, with Level 5127 being closest to the sky, and the most breathable.

That’s the second thing Cassian learns: if he doesn’t prepare properly, doesn’t carry a breath mask with him at all times, he could quite possibly, and quite easily, die.

Level 1 is rumored to be entirely uninhabitable, with no ventilation shafts, and filled with toxic air constantly polluted by the waste and gas that seeps from level to level. Level 1 is buried under 5,126 levels of buildings and ships and people and parks and space. It is said to be the actual ground of the planet, but no one has been able to visit it to verify this.

The rebels move around the Underworld via portals and ventilation shafts, riding in cramped and creaking elevators, and climbing dilapidated and forgotten stairs. They also frequently climb, and Cassian becomes more grateful than ever for his childhood on Fest with Nerezza, and Zeferino, where his siblings frequently took him climbing with them on ice-covered slopes and mountains.

Here, in the Underworld, Cassian’s ability to climb will save his life, more than once.

The Underworld is an abyss, and the deeper you go, the more rampant and terrible the crime becomes.

Atheenia gives Cassian the briefest of overviews, and then introduces him to the rebels she knows. He latches on to each of them, desperate for their leadership and their resilience.

These are people who had lives, real lives, with real jobs and stable families and homes they lived in for a long time. And they left it all, to fight in this war. Cassian wants to understand them.

There’s Casher, who Cassian immediately likes if only because his name sounds a little similar to his own. Casher is from Anaxes, a rocky planet among the Core Worlds, home to rich red plants, spiraling canyons, numerous valleys, and dense forests. He describes the planet in detail to Cassian, as the two of them meander through Level 1312, the air a little thick and cloying, their path lit only by the fluorescent signs advertising dinky cafes and unmarked storage facilities.

“It sounds nice,” says Cassian, of Anaxes.

Casher pauses, and looks at Cassian. His dark blue eyes are suddenly grim.

“It was,” he says, voice soft. “It was destroyed seven years ago. A cataclysmic event.”

“Kriff,” says Cassian, completely taken aback with surprise and alarm. “I’m sorry.”

He sounds like Wada, and Nerezza, and Zeferino, and everyone who has ever apologized to him after they learn of a death in his family. He’s beginning to understand why people do this; it’s because they have nothing else to say, because sometimes the words fail them.

“Me, too,” says Casher.

“What… What happened? What was the event?”

Casher’s face becomes impossibly grimmer. “We don’t know for sure. The official story is a meteor collided with the planet. But… we should’ve been able to see it coming. Anaxes was quite small, certainly; we had moons bigger than us. But we were protected. We should’ve seen it coming.”

“What do you think happened?”

Casher sighs. “We were loyal to the Republic. Anaxes was destroyed almost immediately after the Clone Wars ended, and the Empire rose. I have some suspicions.”

Cassian knows what Casher is inferring, and doesn’t make the man spell it out. He remembers the dark trooper, knows the Empire has shocking and terrifying weapons and science at its hands, and thinks he wouldn’t be surprised that it’d send a meteor suddenly spiraling into a dissenting planet. He simply nods, adjusting the bag around his shoulder, heavy with stolen ammunition.

“It is just an asteroid field now,” says Casher. “I visited it, once, three years ago. Just to see. It looked like any other asteroid field, except occasionally… Well. I thought I could see a flash or two of red, like the plants on Anaxes. But. Couldn’t be.”

“Right,” Cassian says, voice soft.

He understands.

He wishes he didn’t. But he does.

It’s cold, living in the Underworld of Coruscant, and Cassian finds comfort in the frigidity. Most of the other rebels eventually get used to the cold, more or less, but there are always complaints still. Even Wada, who spent six years on Fest, often grumbles about the chilly temperatures of the Underworld.

Cassian, who was born on the snow-covered surface of Fest, doesn’t complain once.

He tells no one, but whenever the cold seeps into his bones, whenever he finds himself shivering on a street corner and has to button his jacket, whenever he sees his breath spiral in front of his face while he rides an elevator down, he feels better. He feels, for a moment, like he’s comfortable. Like he’s home again.

Yet Cassian also believes, most fervently, that _home_ is not a thing he will ever experience again.

Home isn’t an abstract thing to him. He knows it, he remembers it. And with the coldness of the Underworld, he feels it, on a frequent basis. He knows the Coruscant Underworld is not his home, and will never be, but the feeling is enough to cajole him into a sense of unity and rightness. He feels like he’s in the right place.

There’s less of a sense of community, living among the rebels in the Underworld, than Cassian experienced among the Fest Rebellion. He thinks it’s because the Fest Rebellion was so much smaller, and so much more self-contained. Everyone knew everyone, and so it wasn’t overwhelmingly difficult for Travia Chan to organize the Fest Rebellion and become its leader. There is no such cohesion to be found among the rebels of Coruscant.

It is, more or less, anarchy.

Because Coruscant is so condensed and tightly packed, because the buildings are stacked on top of each other, because ships fly through tight corridors with depots and malls on either side, the easiest way to cause a commotion and stall the Empire’s movements and supplies is by bombing. And the Coruscant rebels do; as frequently, and devastatingly, as they can.

Explosions regularly rock the Underworld, shaking pipes and structures and warehouses indiscriminately. Sure, the rebels like to take out as many Imperial properties as they can, but Coruscant is largely controlled by the Empire, so it’s a good chance that anything that gets blown up will at least inconvenience an Imperial soldier or, even better, official.

Cassian has grown up learning how to identify blasters and ships by sight and sound, and now, at fourteen years old, he acquires the same skills for different types of bombs.

Detonite is by far the most popular bomb material. It’s more stable than many others, which makes it near invaluable to the rebels, who are by and large playing this whole anarchy thing fast and loose. Detonite is putty, and malleable, and the rebels can easily make both huge and tiny bombs without much extra effort. It is in this way that bombs are affixed on everything from starship engines to the support beams of Imperial offices, and on one memorable occasion, scattered around the dinner plate of an Imperial officer who makes the unfortunate decision to eat dinner at a restaurant on Level 5120 when Cassian and Wada are in the area to barter for droid parts.

Cassian spots the man, who hasn’t bothered to change out of his steel-gray officer’s uniform. They’re pretty close to the surface levels, where the Underworld ends, so maybe the officer thought he’d be fine dining out, even while being so obviously identifiable as a officer in the Empire. It is not an unfair assumption; as far as the Empire believes, rebels rarely ever appear above Level 5100. This is, of course, not entirely true; rebels regularly appear above Level 5100, they just rarely ever _do_ anything worth noticing.

Cassian and Wada go into the back entrance of the restaurant, surprising the cook, a thin, scaled creature, who barks at them in, of all the languages in the galaxy, Huttese. Cassian tenses up, unfamiliar with the language, but Wada quickly fires back a response. Whatever he says appeases the cook, who pauses, and then snaps something back; Wada answers, and whatever he says is enough. The cook shrugs, and returns to his work. Wada grabs Cassian’s shoulder and tugs him down, so they’re crouching below the counter that separates the kitchen from the main dining area.

“What did you say?” Cassian asks.

“I told him we are rebels, here on a mission,” Wada says. “He told us not to make too much of a mess. He speaks Huttese; it’s likely he’s from a world controlled by the Hutts, and they care very little for the Empire.”

“When did you learn Huttese?”

Wada gives him a withering look, as best as he can as a Rodian. “The language is very similar to Rodian. Quite easy to learn one when you know the other.”

Cassian’s Rodian is spotty, at best, but he supposes he can see vague similarities between Rodian and Huttese. He doesn’t have much time to ponder this, as the cook coughs and pointedly shoves a plate onto the counter above Cassian and Wada’s heads.

The Imperial officer is eating Nerf sausage, which Cassian is entirely unsurprised by.

“How are we doing this?” Wada asks, eyeing the meat with disinterest.

Cassian feels for his pockets and his bag. He isn’t carrying much--he makes it a point not to, never knowing when he might be ambushed or shot or captured and lose all his things--and he can only feel the Rodian blaster, the mini trauma kit he brought with him from Fest, his canteen, and his spare dagger. He turns to the pocket on the inside of his jacket, and his hand brushes over a small bit of detonite, roughly half the size of his palm.

“Do you think it’ll be enough?” Cassian asks.

“It’s enough,” Wada says, taking the detonite. “Question is, what will be the trigger?”

“Something hot,” Cassian says. “It has to be really hot, though, like--”

“It’s our lucky day,” Wada says, looking at something over Cassian’s shoulder. Cassian turns, and sees a large, bubbling pot of a bizarrely yellow-colored soup, boiling with so much enthusiasm it looks liable to tip over the sides.

Cassian looks at Wada, and without speaking, they move in opposite directions.

Wada picks up the sausage, snout nose twitching with displeasure at the smell, and sets the detonite throughout, on top of, around, and on the sides of the sausage, breaking it into tiny pieces to do so. If the Imperial officer doesn’t look too closely, or is familiar with what detonite looks like unfiltered and not inside a bomb, he’ll never know the difference. He’ll likely think it to be an unusual seasoning.

Cassian, meanwhile, approaches the vat of soup with caution. He’s never seen soup like this before; almost chemically, unnaturally yellow. It does smell strongly of cheese, and something else Cassian can’t place. He can feel the heat of the soup just from standing in front of the pot, so maybe this will actually work.

He carefully pours out enough to fill a small bowl, and, with his sleeves rolled over his hands so he can carry the bowl, returns to Wada, who’s scribbling on the meal ticket, adding the soup to the order.

The Huttese-speaking cook watches them, but doesn’t say a word.

They set the food on the counter. Cassian hits the bell to signal the waiter, and they slide back to the floor.

“This is never going to work,” he says.

“He might die anyway,” Wada muses. “I think detonite might be poisonous to humans.”

It’s a ridiculous sentiment, but not an entirely untrue one; Cassian bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

They listen as the waiter appears on the other side of the window, pausing upon seeing two items. He must reason that he simply forgot about the soup, for he picks up both dishes, disappearing again. Cassian and Wada get up and hurry out of the kitchen. As he closes the door, Cassian sees the cook approaching the window to the restaurant, to watch.

Cassian and Wada cross the street, crouching in an alley opposite the restaurant, where they still have a clear enough vantage point to see the Imperial officer. He’s taken off his gray cap and is watching the waiter set the dishes in front of him. Cassian can see the confusion on the man’s face, but like the waiter, he doesn’t question the mysterious addition of the yellow soup.

That so many people on Coruscant just seem to accept unaccounted for food is mind-boggling to Cassian, who’s grown up being uncomfortably aware of exactly how much food he has, whether in his mother’s house where she single-handedly stretched her meager budget to feed three growing children, or on the Fest Rebellion base, which constantly underfed its soldiers, preferring instead to spend its scant resources on weapons and ships.

That the Imperial officer also, apparently, has enough extra credits to spend on food he hadn’t ordered also tells Cassian the man likely has more money than Cassian ever has, or ever will. This is understandable--Cassian doesn’t expect to ever not be poor--but it’s still frustrating.

“Come on, come on,” Wada says, voice soft, eyes locked on the officer in the restaurant.

Cassian expects the officer to either pour the soup over the sausage, like a dressing, or to dip the sausage into the soup. He thinks these are fairly logical expectations.

The officer surprises him.

He spoons the soup into his mouth (coughing a little at the heat of the temperature) and then bites into the sausage.

The result is instantaneous.

The man’s jaw explodes.

Red splatters the window of the restaurant, and the man’s torso and head, whatever’s left of it, slumps forward, knocking the bowl of soup over and directly onto the plate.

This sets off additional small explosions, blowing out the window of the restaurant the man was sitting next to, and setting the table the man was sitting at aflame.

Cassian can hear the screams of the other diners in the restaurant from across the street. He’s shocked, and amazed, that their entirely improvised plot worked so well. He’s also a little stunned; he isn’t sure he expected they’d actually succeed in _killing_ the man. He was thinking the man might be injured, or burned, enough so as to inconvenience him.

Wada seems to be similarly surprised. “Well.”

Diners begin to pour from the building; the fire is starting to spread from the man’s corpse and table.

“We should go,” says Cassian, and he’s ashamed at the way his voice cracks in his disbelief.

“Yes,” says Wada, and the two of them scramble upright, moving quickly towards the mouth of the alley and heading down the street, back towards an elevator that’ll take them further below, deeper into the Coruscant Underworld, to where the rebels are currently camped out in the bowels of Level 3109.

Cassian can hear screeching sirens behind them, as a firespeeder arrives.

Cassian suddenly thinks about the unknown, unemotional cook, and wonders if he will be blamed for the Imperial officer’s murder.

Because that’s what this was; a murder. A cold-blooded, entirely unasked for murder, and just because Cassian happened to see a man wearing the gray uniform of the Empire.

He and Wada step into an elevator, and Wada sends them racing downwards.

Cassian has been on Coruscant for almost half a year, and has fought the Empire for eight years total. He’s killed dozens of times, in multiple ways. But this, this killing is different. Because it was unmotivated. Unprompted. Brought on only by Cassian’s venomous hatred towards the Empire.

Cassian is fourteen years old.

He blinks, and he sees Zeferino, in a gray Imperial uniform identical to the one worn by the man Cassian has just murdered.

“ _This isn’t_ good _, Zeferino! There is nothing good in your bombs, in your guns--_ ”

“ _And I see nothing good in yours, Cassi!_ ”

Cassian closes his eyes. His throat is very dry.

“Why did we do that?” He asks.

Wada looks at him. Cassian and Wada are only an inch or two apart in height now, and Wada cannot turn away to hide his expression. His bug-eyes blink slowly, like he’s surprised by the question.

“He worked for the Empire, Cassian,” says Wada. “Is that not enough?”

Cassian swallows. He turns away, looking out the window of the elevator, sees buildings and advertisements and flashes of neon color, winking in and out of sight.

He blinks, and he sees Nerezza, her sightless eyes, pale skin, the red blood forming a halo around her head as she lies broken on the ice of Fest.

He feels fire return to his veins, feels his fury, his righteousness, returning.

Cassian is fourteen years old.

“It’s enough,” he says.

Wada can only nod, turning away again.

The Underworld unfolds below them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The science behind soup being hot enough to set off a bomb is VERY SUSPECT at best, and STUPID at worst, but this is a science fiction story involving spaceships and light speed travel and it took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, so... YOLO.
> 
> Coruscant Underworld descriptions largely thanks to Wookieepedia.
> 
> Anaxes, and its fate, was an EU story. I'm not trying to suggest that the Empire blew it up, a la the Death Star (and its EU story did not suggest this either) but it is an interesting, weird, thing that "happened".


	19. Asori

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks after Cassian’s fifteenth birthday, a fellow Coruscanti rebel suggests an idea that sends Cassian on his first undercover spy mission, one that will come to define his adolescence.

Two weeks after Cassian’s fifteenth birthday, a fellow Coruscanti rebel suggests an idea that sends Cassian on his first undercover spy mission, one that will come to define his adolescence.

The rebel who suggests the mission is called Asori Joshi. She’s in her early forties, with pitch black hair of an indiscernible length (because whenever Cassian sees her, her hair is always tied back in a painfully neat and tight knot at the back of her head) warm russet-colored skin, and sharp hazel eyes. She was born and raised on Coruscant, to parents who both worked as bankers for the Senate in the Republic; when the Republic fell, they transitioned, and are now bankers working adjacent to the Emperor’s Office, positions that gain them enormous respect in high class Coruscanti society.

Asori had attended the Republic Military Academy, graduating well before the fall of the Republic. She’d enlisted in the Grand Army of the Republic, had fought alongside clones and jedi alike, rising through the ranks as a respected leader. After the end of the Republic, she was moved into the Imperial Navy, serving in an almost identical role as a commander. On her fortieth birthday, she retired from active duty, and became a teacher at the prestigious Royal Imperial Academy on Coruscant.

She’s exactly the kind of Imperial that the rebels are desperate to kill: lifelong, loyal, and brilliant.

It figures, then, that Asori comes across a group of rebels before they can find her.

She stumbles upon a handful of Coruscant rebels as they’re preparing to detonate a bomb in the Financial District, directly under a major bank, with a blast radius that’ll easily send the whole building crumbling far into the Underworld. Asori is in the area to visit her parents at work at a different building; years of military experience guides her to spot the rebels lurking in the underbelly of the city.

She waits, until she can snag two rebels before they’re able to escape into an elevator that will take them further underground. She confronts the pair, military-grade blaster raised. The rebels don’t speak, convinced they’re about to die. Asori stuns them by speaking first.

She tells them to take her to whoever’s in charge.

But no one’s in charge, not really. So the rebels bring her down to where a group of them have gathered, Cassian and Wada among them, and Asori tells them all that she wants to help.

Because that’s the thing about Asori Joshi, lifelong Imperial, decorated soldier: she doesn’t want any of this.

She liked serving the Republic. She remembers the clones and jedi she fought alongside, and she liked them, and then grew to love and adore them all. She remembers the long nights trapped on wayward moons with few supplies, passing the time with laughter and jokes and tales of family and loved ones back home. She remembers the jedi knight who taught her how to fence, and the other who taught her mindful breathing techniques for whenever the stress and trauma of the war became too much. She remembers the designations of the clones she served with, but more importantly, she remembers the nicknames they all had. Jax, and Seven, and Ralf, and Kimy, and Meekal. She adored them all, treated them like the brothers she never had.

And most of all, she remembers the day they all died.

She remembers when the Republic fell, taking her friends with it.

She remembers her horror as the clones, her beloved friends, turned on the jedi they had spent months, _years_ , traveling with, protecting their backs and saving their lives. She remembers the jedis’ yells of confusion. She remembers the shock on their faces as they died in a wave of blaster fire.

She remembers when the clones pulled their helmets off, and she couldn’t recognize them. She didn’t see any of her friends, any of their unique traits and personalities, in the suddenly identical faces that had never truly been identical before, now sharing a devastating lack of emotion.

Jax had never not smiled, even on the long, hard days.

And Seven had always had a habit of flicking his tongue over his bottom lip every few seconds.

And Ralf and Kimy had grown up in the same group on Kamino, and had a way of silently communicating that none of the others had ever understood, and now they looked at each other like strangers.

And Meekal, he’d kissed her just last week, and had blushed whenever he looked at her ever since. Until now, when he only blinked at her, disinterested, and walked away.

She followed her team, numb, back to Coruscant, to find the Jedi Temple in flames and the Republic… gone.

Her friends, her clone soldier comrades, her jedi brothers; all dead. Forgotten, like they’d never existed. Erased, from galactic history.

She’s waited eight years, since the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire, to take her revenge.

She sees how she can get it now, among these scattered rebels of Coruscant.

They need a leader.

She can do that.

Asori joins the Rebellion. She brings a wealth of knowledge, tactical and strategic, and she brings a sense of superiority, as a seasoned officer. She looks at the rebels, and realizes that they aren’t lacking in numbers, like the Empire believes; they’re lacking in leaders.

They need more leaders. They need to recruit leaders.

Younger ones, preferably. People who have not been completely warped by the Empire. Young people who might be more open to other beliefs. Young people who are not yet set in gray stone.

Asori is a teacher at the Royal Imperial Academy. She knows plenty of teenagers like this, who might be turned to the Rebellion. But she needs someone on the inside with her, to back her up, to speak to the cadets one-on-one, as a fellow cadet, as a friend.

She looks at Cassian Andor, a teenaged Coruscant rebel originally from some far away planet called Fest, and sees the perfect candidate.

She tells Cassian all of this, her whole story, and her conclusions about him.

And Cassian, because he’s Cassian Andor, because he’s been fighting for the Rebellion since he was six years old, and recruiting for the Rebellion since he was nine years old, agrees. Right away.

He agrees with Asori; he’s perfect for this.

“We often recruit specifically in Separatist worlds,” says Asori, as she and Cassian meet up for their first planning session, in an alcove of one of Coruscant’s surface parks. They can see the sky today, and it’s a soft pale blue, shadowed by pollution and speeding ships. “A ploy for unity across the galaxy. I’ll personally handpick you as a recruit, and that goes a long way. It is helpful that not only are you from Fest, but you _look_ and _sound_ Festian. Do you speak it?”

“Of course,” says Cassian, almost offended.

“Good. They will test you on that. But you’re also probably going to have to temper down your accent a bit.”

“Temper down-- _Why?_ ”

Asori gives him a plain look. “When was the last time you heard an Imperial with an Outer Rim accent?”

Cassian has no answer to this. He scowls.

“Do you have scandocs, Cassian? A birth record?”

Cassian thinks there’s probably some record of his birth and existence in Fulcra, but he doesn’t have access to it here on Coruscant. He shakes his head, and Asori sighs.

“I figured,” she says. “I think we can get around that. I know a guy.”

Cassian believes her. There’s a different thing that’s bothering him.

“You’ll have to give me a fake name,” he says.

She pauses. “You’re not on the Empire’s radar already, are you?”

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” says Cassian. “Well. Sort of. Maybe. My brother works in Imperial Intelligence. My name can’t be in the records, or he’ll recognize me.”

Asori looks at him. “What’s his name?”

“Zeferino Andor. He’d be nineteen now. If he’s still alive.”

Asori has a strange look on her face. “He is. I know him. I saw him last month.”

Startled, Cassian can only mirror her look of amazement. “ _Where?_ ”

“The Royal Imperial Academy. He graduated.”

The program at the Royal Imperial Academy is three years long, with 8,000 cadets joining at age sixteen. Cassian is fifteen, but Asori has determined he can pass for sixteen.

“I didn’t know,” says Cassian.

“How did you know he works in Imperial Intelligence?”

“He left home when he was fourteen,” says Cassian. “He got recruited.”

Asori looks impressed against her will, her mouth twisted in a grimace. “Imperial Intelligence _never_ recruits that young. I knew your brother was talented, but he must really be…” She trails off.

Cassian can fill in the blanks easily enough.

 _Ambitious. Smart. Cunning. Dangerous_.

“Yes,” he says, quietly. “Asori, how do you know him?”

“He was in one of my classes, last year,” says Asori. “I didn’t know he’d gotten recruited that young though. I thought he was just another cadet.” She pauses and frowns, peering closely at Cassian. “I guess you look a little alike. Same mouth, same nose. Your eyes are different.”

Cassian nods, because this has always been true of him and Zeferino. Zeferino has their father’s eyes, Cassian has their mother’s eyes.

Cassian looks more like Nerezza than anyone else.

But there are very few people who know this.

“I wouldn’t have known you were brothers if you hadn’t told me,” says Asori. “So it won’t be a problem. Anyone who does think you look alike will probably chalk it up to all Festians looking the same.” Cassian snorts while Asori rolls her eyes.

“I’ll come up with a name for you,” she says.

Cassian returns to the attic in the abandoned store he’s currently living in with Wada and a handful of other rebels, on Level 3908. He’s buzzing, full of excitement and nervousness over his new mission, going deep undercover for the first time, and he doesn’t hesitate before waking Wada up to tell him everything.

Wada listens patiently, nodding in the right spots and asking a question or two. Cassian is briefly reminded of being ten years old, chatting animatedly and staring up at Serafima, seeing her soft smile as she patiently listened to his latest anecdote. He pushes the memory aside; he doesn’t have time for this.

When Cassian finishes, breathless, he waits for Wada to collect his thoughts. His green ears are twitching back and forth, a sign Cassian has learned means he’s deep in thought.

“How do you feel, Cassian?” He asks at last.

“I’m excited,” says Cassian.

“Do you trust this woman? Joshi?”

Plenty of other Coruscant rebels have already written Asori off completely, outright refusing to interact with her. This is perfectly understandable, and not unexpected. A common refrain among rebels across the galaxy is “Once an Imperial, always an Imperial.”

Cassian is not sure if he himself shares this view. He trusts Asori, at least.

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Wada asks. “Is that your gut telling you to trust her?”

Cassian considers this. “Yeah.”

Wada nods, looking more or less pleased. “Good. You’re smart, Cassian. I’ve told you before, your ability to trust is a gift. And to perceive who to trust… It means you still trust yourself. This is good, Cassian.”

“I feel good about this mission,” says Cassian.

“You’ll get quite the education. The Royal Imperial Academy is very prestigious, very well-respected.”

“I know.”

“They’ll teach you how to pilot,” says Wada. “You could use the lessons.”

Cassian rolls his eyes as Wada shakes with his wheezing laughter.

The start of term at the Royal Imperial Academy begins three weeks later. Cassian gets up early (now living on Level 3765 of the Coruscant Underworld) and goes through his pack again, making sure he has everything. He’s taking almost all of his things with him, save for the Rodian blaster Wada had given him for his thirteenth birthday (because there isn’t a good explanation that the Empire will buy for why a teenage boy from Fest has a custom Rodian-made blaster). Wada has agreed to hang onto the blaster for Cassian in the meantime.

Cassian isn’t sure when he’ll see Wada again. He knows the Academy gives its cadets breaks, and the occasional furlough for cadets to go home. Cassian has no plans to actually return to Fest, but he should get to spend his furlough in the Coruscant Underworld, among Wada and the other rebels.

The Underworld isn’t home, not really. The rebels themselves don’t offer much in the way of home, either. But they’re all that Cassian has left.

And Cassian is recruiting for the Coruscant rebels; that’s the point of this mission. He’ll have to return to and communicate with the rebels in the Underworld from time to time, no matter what.

Wada walks Cassian to the nearest stop for a transport that’ll take him to the Academy. Unbidden, Cassian is visited by an old memory, of his father and mother taking the time out of their work schedules to walk him to school, on his very first day, when he was a young child.

It’s the first time he’s pictured his father’s face so clearly in a long time.

He’s snapped out of it by Wada hugging him tightly.

“You’ll be great,” says Wada, stepping back and clapping Cassian’s shoulder. He and Cassian are the exact same height now, but Cassian knows they still look unusual, a Festian and a Rodian embracing on Coruscant. “Contact me if you need anything. I’m proud of you.”

“Sure,” says Cassian, feeling oddly choked up. “Um, thanks.”

“Be smart,” says Wada sharply.

“I will,” says Cassian.

He tries desperately not to think of the last words Gabriel said to him, and Nerezza, but they come to him in that moment anyway.

 _Be good_ , says Gabriel, and he’s blown to pieces on Carida.

 _Be brave_ , says Nerezza, and she’s shot on the ice of Fest.

Cassian is suddenly terrified that this is the last time he’ll see Wada.

“You be smart, too, Wada,” he says.

Wada laughs. “When am I not smart, Cassian?”

The transport arrives, hovering above the platform. A number of people around the station get on, carting heavy bags and cases with them. Wada gives Cassian a gentle shove towards the transport, and Cassian moves, suddenly uncertain.

He climbs onto the transport and quickly finds a window seat. Wada is still loitering on the platform, hands in the pockets of his heavy tan pants, blaster on his hip. He looks like any other Rodian, unknowable and dangerous, but he’s the Rodian who Cassian has known for almost half his life, the Rodian who Cassian would trust with his life, considers to be his family.

Wada raises a hand in farewell and Cassian nods, mimicking the gesture.

The transport lifts off, and only then does Cassian slide into his seat. He sits, watching the towering buildings and shimmering skyscrapers of Coruscant flash by. He forces his fear and anxiety down into his stomach, talking himself down, calming himself, reminding him of who he is now.

His name is Joreth Sward. He’s sixteen years old, and he’s from Fest, born and raised in the city of Edur, on the other side of the planet from the capital city of Fulcra. His parents are both engineers, and he has a younger sister named Joana. He was handpicked for the Royal Imperial Academy by Asori Joshi, when she visited the planet on a scouting mission last year.

These are all facts Cassian has memorized. He has the scandocs (their origin is a mystery to him; he didn’t ask when Asori shoved them into his hands last week) to prove it. He’s lucky in that he has actually spent some time in Edur, both on the occasional trip with his family while his father was still alive, and on official trips for the Fest Rebellion; he won’t be tripped up should anyone ask him about the city.

As for Fest, there is nowhere in the galaxy Cassian knows as well as he knows Fest.

He’s barely spoken Festian since Nerezza died, since that last shouting match with Zeferino in the destroyed base, but he’s spent the last couple weeks talking to himself exclusively in Festian, forcing himself to remember the language.

It’s, inadvertently, woken up a cascade of forgotten memories in Cassian. Memories of his family, like the one of his mother and father walking him to school.

Memories of Nerezza furiously berating seven-year-old Cassian in Festian after he ice boarded down a particularly dangerous slope outside Fulcra.

Memories of Zeferino reading out an old recipe in Festian, one eye on the recipe and the other on nine-year-old Cassian, cutting up Charbote root on the kitchen counter.

Memories of Serafima listening to five-year-old Cassian reading one of his school books aloud, pausing to carefully enunciate a word, making sure he got it right.

Memories of Gabriel softly singing an ancient Festian lullaby to four-year-old Cassian, lying in his bed, his father watching him as he fell asleep.

Now, Cassian is fifteen years old. He’s been an orphan for five years, and without a sibling for two years.

He stares out the window for the remainder of the trip.

The Royal Imperial Academy is just as imposing as Cassian expected. It’s huge, its campus spanning for several city blocks on the surface of Coruscant. There are tall lecture halls, libraries, residence buildings, hangars for ships and speeders, gyms, and open spaces for cadets to relax and hang out with one another. All of the buildings are in shades of red, gray, and white, all colors frequently associated with the Empire. Cassian knows that cadets wear solidly black uniforms, to create unity, but Asori has told him that incoming first-year cadets are given the uniforms on their first day, and are expected to arrive in civilian clothes.

“It’s a reminder that you’re all coming from different parts of the galaxy,” she’d said, voice dry, at their last meeting in a grimy diner on Level 2391. “But that you’re still going to work together and become a unified front to represent the Empire across the galaxy.”

The transport stops in front of the Museum of Multispecies Sciences, an unimposing brown building that houses an organization that Cassian would normally find interesting, but he’s too focused on the Imperial Palace, an enormous tan structure, looming in the distance.

Cassian knows that the Imperial Palace was once the Jedi Temple, though he finds it hard to believe that the supposedly humble jedi ever lived and taught in such an audacious, grandiose space. He thinks of Asori, and her dead jedi friends, her hatred of the Empire, and how awful it must be to see, everyday, the home of her old friends repurposed as the lair of the Emperor.

He turns away from the Imperial Palace and walks towards the campus of the Academy.

He’s reminded of how he felt when Nerezza brought him to the Fest Rebellion headquarters for the first time, back when it was just their dead father’s Insurrectionist Cell. He was nervous, but excited, and amazed at how large and intimidating everything and everyone was. He feels like that now, but more so, because here he is, a lifelong rebel, walking directly into the heart of the Empire, seeking to infiltrate it and convert Imperial-sympathizers to his cause.

It’s the kind of wild, ridiculous plan that Nerezza would’ve loved, and signed up for in a heartbeat, much like Cassian had.

The thought makes him smile, and he’s still smiling when he finally locates Asori, in her steel-gray officer’s uniform, loitering outside the Main Hall. She’s to take him inside, as his recruiter.

“You’re in a good mood,” she says, raising one perfectly styled eyebrow at him.

“This is the best day of my life,” says Cassian, because he imagines Joreth Sward would be thrilled to be here.

Asori smiles. “Good. It should be.” She waves her arm towards the tall doors that lead into the Main Hall.

“Let’s begin,” she says, with a wink.

Cassian nods, shoves any lingering memories or thoughts of his dead family, of Wada and the other rebels fighting for their everyday survival in the Underworld below his feet, and follows Asori into the Royal Imperial Academy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asori is an Original Character, as is everyone in this story unless otherwise stated.
> 
> Joreth Sward is an official alias of Cassian Andor, but that was all the information available on it, so this is what I'm doing with it. It isn't canon or anything that this happened, as is... the entire story.
> 
> The Royal Imperial Academy is a canon thing, as are its descriptions, for the most part.


	20. The Academy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian settles into life at the Royal Imperial Academy with an ease and grace that almost worries him.

Cassian settles into life at the Royal Imperial Academy with an ease and grace that almost worries him.

He receives the monochromatic uniform of an Academy cadet, consisting of a dark jacket, black boots, and black trousers. It isn’t too dissimilar to what Cassian grew up wearing on Fest, though the jacket is fairly lightweight, and he now matches everyone he meets to a T. This aspect extends to his hair; all of the male cadets are forced to wear their hair military-grade short, and so Cassian silently bids farewell to his messy, chin-length hair, as it’s cut to rest close to his head. He doesn’t like it, mostly because it makes him look more like Zeferino than he has in years.

But his room is bigger than he expected, and the first semi-permanent space he’s had to call home in two years.

He has a roommate, a sixteen-year-old boy named Daren Talus, from Corellia. Daren has dusty blond hair, pale skin, and a smattering of freckles across his face. He shakes Cassian’s hand firmly when they meet, offering a bright smile and moving with a confident swagger. He reminds Cassian of Zeferino, and Cassian knows the constant reminder of his estranged brother means that this living arrangement will either be perfectly acceptable or downright terrible.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone speak with your accent before,” Daren comments, sitting on his bunk and watching Cassian as he looks around their shared room. “Where are you from, Joreth?”

Asori has called Cassian Joreth for weeks now, but he’s still not quite used to it. She’s also frequently reminded him to work on curbing his accent to resemble something closer to the clipped Galactic Basic most Coruscatians speak with, but it’s been difficult. He’s getting better at it.

Cassian is fifteen years old, but Joreth is sixteen, and this, oddly enough, is the fact he’s having the hardest time remembering.

“Fest,” says Cassian.

“Where the hell is that?”

“The Outer Rim,” says Cassian. “Close to Wild Space.”

Daren is suitably impressed, dark blue eyes wide. “Was it a Separatist world?”

Cassian pauses in his unpacking, looking up at Daren. “It was.”

“Are there rebels?”

“Yes,” says Cassian.

“Have you ever met any?” Daren asks.

“Yes, a few,” says Cassian, and it is not a lie.

“Some kids in my neighborhood joined up with the Corellian Resistance,” says Daren, his tone of voice suggesting incredulity. He’s leaning against the wall, hands folded across his stomach. “They’re gettin’ more vicious by the day. There’re rumors that they’re even infiltrating the military bases around the planet.”

This is a test; Cassian scowls.

“Unbelievable,” he says, and Daren agrees.

After a month of living together, Cassian still isn’t sure how much he really likes Daren. The guy is very much an Imperial, with both his parents being officers stationed on Corellia; they were thrilled when Daren was accepted to the Royal Imperial Academy, and Daren says they boast of their son’s accomplishment to everyone they meet.

But Daren is polite, and earnestly interested in listening to and speaking with Cassian, and it’s nice to have a friend to eat in the mess hall with and walk to the main campus alongside.

Daren is extremely impressed with Cassian’s cooking skills, and Cassian finds an odd vindictive pleasure at the way Daren’s skin flushes when he tries the spicy Festian stew that Zeferino taught Cassian how to make, so many years ago.

But Daren is game to try whatever Cassian puts in front of him, and eats with enthusiasm, and keeps a seemingly endless supply of Corellian brandy under his bed, so Cassian doesn’t mind him too much.

He finds himself constantly surprised at how people look at him with recognition now.

Cassian’s first year on Coruscant hinged on being unrecognizable and unnoticeable to everyone he saw on the streets, inside buildings, in public spaces. It’s always been important that he go incognito, and unknown; even in the Fest Rebellion, it was understood that no one talk about other members while outside base. Rebellions rely on anonymity, and Cassian has always preferred to be nameless. It keeps his work, and him, alive.

But everyone in the Royal Imperial Academy knows him.

His jacket has his, albeit fake, name printed on it, SWARD, just over his heart, and everyone calls him Cadet Sward, save for the classmates he’s beginning to realize are becoming his friends.

There’s a redheaded girl called Lexis Quo in his Small Craft Flight class. She sits next to Cassian on the first day of class, and after a bit of polite small talk, mentions she’s from the Atravis Sector. Cassian is instantly intrigued, and asks her which planet in the sector she’s from, but is baffled when she says she’s from a planet called Vale. After a minute or two of mutual confusion, they realize they’re from opposite parts of the galaxy. Fest is located in the Atrivis Sector, a difference in name really only noticeable when spelled out, between Cassian’s Festian accent and Lexis’ Valen accent.

From then on, Lexis refers to herself and Cassian as _‘vis friends_ , with her Valen accent turning the _v_ into a _b_ sound, so she appears to be calling them _best friends_. Cassian thinks the joke is a little cheesy, but has also never really had friends outside the Rebellion to begin with, and goes along with it.

Asori had mentioned to Cassian that recruiters make a point of finding cadets in the Outer Rim, on former Separatist-controlled worlds, but Cassian knows these cadets are still very much a minority among the 8,000 or so cadets that make up his class at the Academy. He and Lexis bond over their outsider status, and she makes it a point to find other kids from the Outer Rim, introducing them.

Cassian decides that these are the kids he’s going to try to recruit for the Rebellion first.

He has to wait a long time though. The vast majority of cadets at the Academy wear their devotion to the Empire on their sleeve, openly praising the Emperor in the halls and classrooms. Trying to talk to any of them about the Rebellion, in any positive sense, is a literal death sentence; the Academy is an Imperial Academy, and cadets are strongly encouraged to report any suspicious, rebel-sympathizing behavior.

Cassian wears a mask almost constantly.

He’s fifteen years old.

(But Joreth is sixteen, and he must remember this.)

Joreth laughs at the anti-rebel jokes and propaganda that proliferates the campus, and throws the phrase “rebel scum” around like it comes naturally to him. He listens to stories from teachers and pilots of battles, of shooting rebels, of torturing them for information, of ransacking hidden rebel bases. He takes notes diligently, and writes eloquent essays on topics including the fall of the Republic, and the good the Empire has conducted throughout the galaxy.

It is draining, and debilitating.

His only reprieve is when Asori invites him to have a caf off-campus with her, or to eat a private lunch in her secluded office.

Every time Cassian walks through the door, closing it behind him, he sighs deeply, and sags.

Asori’s face is sympathetic.

“Welcome to my life for the past eight years,” she says, and seeing his exhaustion, pours them both a generous glass of Alderaan Ruge liqueur.

But Cassian is excelling in his classes, and he knows Asori is impressed, and a little surprised. Not because she thinks Cassian is stupid--she wouldn’t have selected him to infiltrate the Academy if she did--but because she had a poor opinion of education in the Outer Rim, specifically on former Separatist-controlled planets that didn’t have the Republic overseeing how it was being run. Particularly on an ice-covered planet like Fest, which boasts a climate that isn’t typically inviting to educated outsiders.

“When the storms get really bad, we go inside and read,” Cassian says, deadpan. Asori laughs, but he isn’t really joking. He spent plenty of time throughout his childhood lying in front of the main heating unit in his mother’s house, reading book after book, as snow piled up outside the window.

Along with good marks, Cassian receives admiration and interest from his teachers.

Professor Kendet teaches Cassian’s Galactic History class. A stunningly tall man with a thick, dark moustache, he tends to prefer to terrify his cadets into excellence, sharing his traumatic war stories from when he was a young soldier in the Grand Army of the Republic. Cassian listens attentively to these lectures, and carefully creates miniature galaxy maps in his notes to help track Kendet’s histories. Kendet catches him at it one day, but rather than berate Cassian for working outside his set learning parameters, he praises him for his diligence.

Captain Gallamby teaches Cassian’s mandatory physical fitness class. In contrast to Kendet, he’s smaller than average, but made almost entirely of muscle. He scales the wall of the Main Hall, a wall that’s at least fifty feet tall, on the first day of class, using only his hands and feet, much to the amazement of the cadets watching from the ground. Cassian squints up with the rest of the cadets, listening to Daren’s muttered curses at his side.

Gallamby warns them that his final exam involves climbing that same wall. Failing to do so is to fail his class.

Cassian grew up climbing mountains and ridges around Fest with only his hands and feet, copying Nerezza’s steps over the rocky terrain, Zeferino cautiously following him. He’s also had to climb around the Coruscant Underworld, to escape and to hide, but he hasn’t climbed a wall this smooth before.

Two weeks after the start of term, during his free period, he gives it a shot.

It’s slow-going, and definitely difficult, but he surprises himself and makes it to the top, clambering over the side to sit on the ledge.

He sits there, panting, and looks out over the campus. The buildings gleam in the light of Coruscant, as the sun sets, sending shadows spiraling across them. The red buildings look to be painted with dark blood, the gray ones almost black, and the white buildings practically vanish into the background. If he squints, he can see the Imperial Palace, bizarrely monolithic for not being nearly the tallest building in the area.

Dimly, he realizes someone is called for Cadet Sward.

He looks down, and Gallamby is staring up at him, hand just above his eyes to block out the sun.

“You get up there by yourself?” He calls.

“Yes, sir,” says Cassian.

Gallamby nods. “The real trick is getting down, cadet.”

He’s right. Cassian’s climb back down the wall is much slower, and strains his shoulders and gloved hands. He can feel sweat trickling down his neck and back, digging the toes of his boots into the wall. He lets himself slide down when he’s ten feet above the ground.

Gallamby approaches him, eyeing him thoughtfully. “Where are you from, cadet?”

“Fest, sir.”

“Got a lot of mountains out there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You climb any?” There’s a gleam in his eye, and Cassian, who has been forced to learn to read unknowable people all his life, ascertains it to be humor.

“Yes, sir. One or two, sir.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” says Gallamby, but he’s smiling, and Cassian knows he has made an impression, and it’s a very good one. “I expect you to halve your time for your final exam, Cadet Sward.”

“Yes, sir,” says Cassian.

(He will.)

“You’re quite charming,” Asori comments one day, having breakfast with Cassian in a surprisingly clean diner in CoCo Town, just above where the Underworld begins. Whenever Cassian and Asori go out to eat, they tend to avoid the Underworld, in case they’re spotted by someone from the Academy who’d have a lot of questions as to what they were doing there. CoCo Town is just far away enough, and just gross and uncivilized enough, to keep the vast majority of people who frequent the Academy away from it, giving Asori and Cassian a feeling of escapism, something they both desperately need.

Cassian is currently tearing through his Gartro egg omelet like he hasn’t eaten in days, so Asori’s words take a moment to register. She probably could’ve said them when Cassian was displaying a bit more grace, but he’s fifteen years old, and in the middle of a growth spurt.

“I’m sorry?” He says.

“I’m hearing a lot about you,” Asori says. “Your professors, the officers… They’re all quite fond of you. Think you have a lot of promise.”

“Do you?” He slows down, picking at the last bits of Ferroan spinach on his plate.

She snorts, her turn to be ungraceful, sipping her caf. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Cassian pauses, and looks at her. “Am I doing okay?”

Asori raises one dark eyebrow. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Joreth. It doesn’t suit you.”

No one has called Cassian by his name in four months. He misses it.

He hasn’t seen Wada since he’d walked him to the transport, on his first day at the Academy, what with Cassian perpetually almost drowning in coursework and classes. Cassian and Asori cannot openly discuss the Rebellion, not even in her office (she’s fairly confident it isn’t bugged, but, well, she works in a building owned and operated by the Empire) or even out and around Coruscant, with the planet so full of spies and people of uncertain morals and allegiance. Rather, she and Cassian speak in a code they’d developed before Cassian had gotten to the Academy, wherein Wada is Joreth Sward’s unnamed uncle.

He knows Wada is still alive, and that’s enough.

Five months after arriving at the Academy, close to the end of his first term, Cassian meets his first recruit for the Rebellion.

His small group of Outer Rim friends has been discouraged, more or less, by the Academy. Over the course of the term, Cassian noticed that his friends were becoming distant, withdrawn, and resigned. He brought it up with Asori, who told him about the Office of Student Outcomes, an office Cassian has heard of before. He understands that it oversees student performance at the Academy, and runs workshops among professors and officers to further teaching. Asori informs him that the office, unofficially, also works to discourage relationships among cadets from the same homeworld.

“But why?” Cassian asks, bewildered.

“To tighten your ties to the Empire,” says Asori. “The Empire must be your number one, the body you are most loyal to. The Empire… encourages the cadets to leave their homeworlds, and their families and of course, their friends behind. Clustering among others from your homeworlds threatens this. The Empire is first, above all else.”

She pauses, and adds, “I guess you and your friends all being from the Outer Rim is close enough. Even if you’re from opposite sides of the galaxy.”

Now that he’s aware of what the Office of Student Outcomes is really for, Cassian sees how it works. He watches as children of Imperial officers, like Daren, receive special attention and encouragement, whether it’s by going last on physical challenges, or being given a pass for a late assignment. He sees how many of his Outer Rim friends are moved to different classes, starting at different times, with the official reason being that the Office of Student Outcomes has determined they’ll fare better in these other classes.

Cassian and Lexis manage to remain friends, but they’re all that’s left.

He finds himself surrounded by more and more cadets from the Core and Inner Worlds, and this is how he meets Ethan Bain.

Ethan, who he meets when they’re partnered to spot each other in Gallamby’s class, is from Coruscant. More specifically, Cassian quickly learns, he’s from CoCo Town, which Cassian finds to be incredibly encouraging. CoCo Town is still relatively split between Imperial-sympathizers and rebel-sympathizers (as evidenced by Asori and Cassian frequenting it without trouble) so there’s a good chance that Ethan can be swayed to the Rebellion.

Cassian invites Ethan to hang out with him outside of class, to go to the mess hall together, to study, to go on early morning runs around the campus. Ethan is quiet, and a little shy, with blue eyes so pale they almost look gray, and curly brown hair. Like Daren, he asks Cassian about growing up on Fest, but unlike Daren, he takes care to ask Cassian about his family there.

More than once, Cassian has to remind himself that Joreth Sward’s family is not Gabriel, Serafima, Nerezza, and Zeferino. Instead, he describes his father Florian, his mother Nara, and his little sister, Joana. He gives them full, three-dimensional lives, and dreams. He says his sister wants to come to Coruscant, to attend university, to become a teacher.

In spite of himself, when he describes her physical features, he realizes he’s describing Nerezza when she was younger.

He decides it doesn’t matter. Ethan will never see a picture of Nerezza.

But the wistfulness in his voice is real, and Ethan picks up on it. On one of their rare weekends off, he invites Cassian to his parents’ apartment in CoCo Town.

Cassian agrees. He leaves a message with Asori of where he’s going, packs a bag for the weekend, and gets on the transport with Ethan.

Ethan’s parents run an expensive clothing store in CoCo Town, catering to the wealthy citizens of the upper levels of Coruscant. Ethan takes Cassian to the store first, the two of them wearing their Academy cadet uniforms, and attracting some attention from the well-to-do patrons because of it. More often than not, Cassian sees a man in a costly suit nod in their direction, in clear approval, and a few people even go out of their way to hold doors or step aside so Ethan and Cassian can pass through.

Cassian has never had strangers cater to him in this way before, and feels uncomfortable.

Ethan looks very much like his father, a tall, thin man he introduces as Damon, who wears a sharp black suit and thin glasses. He shakes Cassian’s hand with surprising warmth, and comments that he’s heard all about Joreth from Ethan.

Ethan’s mother, Callista, is much shorter than her husband, plump, with curly hair that matches Ethan’s. She ignores Cassian’s proffered hand and goes straight for a hug.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you, Joreth,” she says.

“You too, Mrs. Bain,” says Cassian.

“Oh, forget that, call me Callista. Come in, come in, set your bag down. Are you hungry? I’ve got Creamed Rishi corn soup ready to be heated up, or I can make a sandwich? Ethan says you’re from Fest. Damon and I had to look it up, we’d never heard of it before, I must confess. I found a recipe for Festian stew, and I’d love to make it, but I was hoping you could look at it first and tell me if it sounds right. I was thinking too…”

Her voice seems to fade away as Cassian stares at her, touched, and a little overwhelmed at the generosity.

Ethan rescues him: “Joreth’s a great cook, Ma. He doesn’t need a recipe to make Festian stew, and his will probably be better.”

“Oh, would you help me?” Callista asks, voice bright but somehow not cloying.

“Of-Of course,” says Cassian, trying to ignore the way his voice cracks.

Ethan drags him away.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbles. “She’s worried you’re homesick, being so far from your homeworld, and all…”

Cassian thinks Callista isn’t wrong, but also that he’s homesick in ways she has no way of knowing.

Ethan then introduces him to his little brother, Sebastian. Sebastian is seven, but looks almost exactly like Ethan, with the gray-blue eyes and curly hair. Like his parents, he has seemingly heard everything about Joreth, and doesn’t hesitate to voice his displeasure at how cold he’s heard Fest is.

“It’s warmer here,” Cassian agrees.

“I’ve never left Coruscant,” says Sebastian. “Do you like Coruscant more than Fest?”

Cassian doesn’t know what to say to that. He had a family on Fest, and he doesn’t have one on Coruscant. But his family also died on Fest, and that isn’t something he can ever push aside.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to answer as Cassian, but as Joreth.

“Very much,” he says.

Damon, Callista, and Sebastian have all very obviously been preparing for Cassian’s visit. They’ve read up on Fest, and they’ve peppered Ethan with questions about his and Cassian’s classes at the Academy. They’re all very polite and friendly towards Cassian, and their apartment is clean and organized.

They forget one thing though. When Callista points out a cabinet in the kitchen for Cassian to find a spare canister of pepper for the Festian stew he’s helping her make on the second night of his visit, he opens the cabinet and immediately comes face-to-face with rebel propaganda papers.

He takes them out, slowly, and stares at them. RESIST is printed across the top, along with a list of organizations rumored to be working to fight the Empire, on different planets across the galaxy. Cassian sees the Corellian Resistance is listed, alongside resistances on Alderaan and Chandrila. Fest is absent, but that doesn’t surprise him.

Cassian becomes aware that Callista is frozen behind him. He looks up at her, taking in her wide eyes and shaking hands.

She’s nervous, but she isn’t afraid.

Cassian thinks about Ethan, his kindness and friendship, and he thinks about Damon and Callista and Sebastian, and their generosity and familiarity towards him. Cassian pulls himself together. He remembers being nine years old, and the persona he created to recruit on Fest.

“There’s a Rebellion here, on Coruscant,” he says.

Callista stares at him. Cassian sees Ethan and Sebastian, frozen in the doorway behind her.

“In the Underworld,” he says. “We don’t know how many of us there are. More than you’d expect, probably. It’s a bit scattered, but… We’re here.”

“You’re a rebel?” Ethan asks, and he does sound surprised.

Cassian nods. “I’ve been one since I was six years old. On Fest.” He pauses and adds, “I’m at the Academy to find people who might be willing to fight for the cause. For the Rebellion. To take down the Empire.”

“We…” Callista swallows. “We thought there might be one here, but we could never find it.”

Cassian glances from Ethan, to Callista, and then back again. “We need you. All of you. If you want to help. I can introduce you to the right people.”

Callista looks at her sons, who stare back at her. All three of them turn towards Cassian, and then, all three of them nod.

When Damon returns home that night, they tell him of what they’ve decided. He takes it in stride, and smiles, and Cassian smiles too, thinking of the wealthy patrons who frequent the clothing store, and all the things they might spill to their beloved store’s owners.

The Bain family joins the Rebellion that day.

Cassian’s work is only just beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Details about the Royal Imperial Academy, including the uniform, and the Office of Student Outcomes, are based off wookieepedia info.
> 
> The joke about Atravis vs. Atrivis is a real life one because I only found out while writing this chapter, and looking at a map of the STAR WARS galaxy, that I'd been picturing Fest in the entirely wrong place. It is super ridiculous.
> 
> The Bain family, Daren, Lexis, Gallamby, and Kendet are all original characters, as is everyone else in this story unless otherwise stated.
> 
> In real life, I have just crossed the 130k word count mark of this story. (Cassian is 23.) I will likely finish before the end of March, which is neat.


	21. Nocturne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is sixteen years old, and struggling to not lose himself.

Cassian is sixteen years old, and struggling to not lose himself.

He finishes his first year at the Royal Imperial Academy, and is ranked third in his class, which began with 8,000 cadets and ends the year with just over 4,000. Asori tells him this is typical; the Academy’s rigor is too much for many, and drop-outs are quite common, with classes usually halving themselves at the end of each year.

Cassian doesn’t drop-out. He can’t.

He begins his second year at the Royal Imperial Academy, and his classes become more and more challenging. The second-year curriculum is focused around science and mathematics, and while his school on Fest did delve into these topics, they didn’t go quite this far, or this advanced. His professors are more demanding than they were his first year, and even the piloting instructors and combat instructors look, and find, every possible flaw the cadets make, no matter how insignificant.

Cassian likes his piloting lessons, and he likes flying in ships of all shapes and sizes. He doesn’t like that these lessons are challenging for him, and that he isn’t as talented at flying as some of the other cadets.

He tells Wada as much, during one of Cassian’s rare weeks off, when they actually get to see each other in person.

“I told you when you were little that you were an adequate pilot,” says Wada, not even looking up from the blaster he’s putting together. “It is perfectly fine not to be the best at piloting, Cassian. You make up for it.”

Cassian is visiting Wada in the abandoned hotel building on Level 4876 that a good chunk of the Coruscant Rebellion have recently re-purposed as a semi-permanent base. The Coruscant Rebellion has changed drastically in the two years since Cassian and Wada first encountered it. Their numbers swell by the week, growing and expanding, moving into different sectors of the planet and around the Underworld. There are a handful of leaders to guide the cells of rebels, working under Asori, and there’s a hint of cohesive community, something that Cassian has felt was sorely lacking.

Wada is considered to be something of a senior leader now, a fact that pleases Cassian enormously but drives Wada crazy, more or less.

“People are constantly coming into my space,” he says, his green ears twitching with annoyance. “I do not mind helping, but I also like my privacy.”

This is hilarious to Cassian, who has never associated privacy with the Rebellion in any sense.

Cassian’s recruiting work has been steady. Ethan and his family have been enormously helpful to the Rebellion, almost constantly bringing in secrets and new intel on the movement of the wealthy Coruscantians that help guide local policy on Coruscant, policy that frequently goes on to be incorporated on other planets around the galaxy.

After Ethan and his family, Cassian recruits Lexis, his Atravis Sector friend. She’s fairly easy to persuade, having spent almost her entire life on Vale, a planet that Cassian learns has its own Rebellion outlet practically running the entire planet. Her father and her two sisters support the Empire, but her mother doesn’t, and it is with her mother in mind that she joins the Rebellion on Coruscant, while staying at the Academy to appease her father.

Cassian patiently listens to Lexis complain about her divided family while they study in his room.

“It’s perfectly fine for them to disagree,” she says, her accent becoming more pronounced as her voice fills with frustration. “But I just wish they did not disagree on _this_. It would be easier, much easier, if we could be a family about this. I wish we could fight together.”

Cassian, of course, grew up in a divided family, and can very much empathize. Joreth didn’t, however, and he can only grimace in apparent sympathy.

It is Asori who tells Cassian that he should not offer up his real name to any of his friends at the Academy.

“Why not?” He asks. “They trust me, I trust them. We’re working together. They already know I’m in the Rebellion, so why does it matter if they turn in Joreth Sward or Cass--”

“Shh,” Asori hisses, looking around the park they’re walking in, speeders flying overhead. “It might not matter. But your real name is _real_. It’s  _yours._  You might need it to escape someday.” She pauses, glancing at Cassian. “You might need it to get your brother’s help.”

Cassian scoffs. “I don’t need him.”

“Not yet,” Asori says. “Even if you don’t need it for your brother… Giving someone your real name is a sign of trust. Letting someone call you by it tells them that you are on their team. It’s priceless. Don’t throw it around like it is meaningless.”

Cassian is largely unconvinced by this argument, but none of his recruits have yet flat-out asked him if Joreth Sward is his real name. He reasons that he’ll let them think it is, but if they ever suspect otherwise and ask, he’ll tell them the truth. He doesn’t enjoy lying to his friends, and if he’s learned anything from Wada, it’s that trust is the key to everything.

Aside from the occasional recruit Cassian brings into the Rebellion, he’s also learning and sharing information on the Empire. He’s fairly close to a handful of his instructors, particularly still Professor Kendet and Captain Gallamby. Kendet teaches first-year cadets exclusively, but he still takes time out of his schedule to treat Cassian to dinner once a month or so, where he asks Cassian questions on his opinions, his beliefs, and his backstory. The dinners are enormously challenging to Cassian, as they require him to build a remarkably extensive character history of Joreth Sward, one that he has to keep careful track of so as to avoid detection. The dinners are worth it, however; Kendet clearly trusts Cassian, and doesn’t mind telling him about his meetings, his lesson planning with the higher officials that run the Academy, and even his occasional visit with Imperial Senators, discussing Imperial movements on planets beyond Coruscant.

Gallamby teaches an occasional second-year class, and Cassian has him for his specialized hand-to-hand combat course. Gallamby is ruthless with the cadets, demanding perfection with viciousness. He continues to hold Cassian in high esteem, has ever since Cassian climbed the wall of the Main Hall before anyone else in his class, and only grew to like him more when Cassian climbed the wall faster than anyone else in the exam. This means that Gallamby often keeps an eye on Cassian, and is quick to note any mistakes he makes, and immediately has Cassian correct them. The upside of this is that Cassian is excelling; the downside is that he’s forced to talk to Gallamby more than he wants to.

Cassian can stomach talking to Kendet without too much difficulty, but Gallamby, he is learning, is a special brand of atrocious that only the Empire could cultivate.

Gallamby frequently cites his old Clone Wars stories for his cadets, and he relishes in the details. He’s perhaps the most gifted soldier turned storyteller Cassian has ever met, which is saying a lot, because Cassian’s fairly sure that the majority of people he’s ever spoken to are storytelling soldiers. But he’s never heard war stories like Gallamby tells them; they’re hyper-realistic, certainly, which can be construed as a good thing. But he tells them with such enthusiastic relish, almost _delight_.

Plus, he often describes killing people Cassian would’ve considered comrades, and friends.

This comes to a head one day, when Gallamby brings a holovid projector to class, ordering the cadets to sit and watch.

“A buddy of mine sent me this,” he says. “He and a few friends caught a rebel red-handed down in the Coruscant Underworld.”

The classroom full of seventeen-year-olds (save for Cassian, who is sixteen) seems to sit up straight, interested and riveted. Cassian feels cold shoot down his spine, and he swallows hard, eyes locked on the projector, nervous for what he’s about to see.

It’s shot from what appears to be a security camera outside some kind of shop. Cassian doesn’t recognize the street, nor any signs indicating what level of the Underworld this is on. He watches in silence, rapt for different reasons than his classmates.

An explosion occurs just beyond the camera, sending a fireball blurring past the lens. A moment later, a woman appears on the street, and Cassian’s breath catches.

It’s Isa, fifty-eight years old, one of the first rebels that Cassian was introduced to on Coruscant. Isa, whose white skin seems to shine in the street light, skin so unnaturally pale due to her years and years spent almost literally underground, for the Rebellion. Isa, who left a good life as a steward, flying across the galaxy, to fight the Empire in the shadows, in the slums of Coruscant.

As he watches, she’s accosted by three men; two are in the steel gray officer’s uniform of the Empire, while the third is in civilian clothes.

They seem to say something to her--the camera doesn’t pick up audio--and she says something back. Cassian looks at her face, sees her wide, unblinking eyes, catalogs the way she stands so straight and tall, just as the men pounce.

It is a violent, cruel assault. The three men take turns beating her, until she falls under the onslaught. Isa is fifty-eight years old, Cassian knows, and she isn’t as fast or strong as she used to be.

He’s biting his tongue so hard to keep from yelling that he tastes blood in his mouth.

The men eventually take a step back. Isa is curled on the street, breathing sporadically, covered in blood, with almost all her limbs bent at unnatural angles. The men look at her for a moment, before one of them turns, vanishing from the frame. The other two stand above Isa, on the ground, barely alive.

Cassian feels dread spiking in his chest.

He doesn’t have long to feel it, though. The third man returns, wielding an iron wrench, likely pilfered from a speeder toolkit. As Cassian watches, he approaches the prone Isa; the man raises the wrench above his head, and then brings it down hard on her face.

Instantly, Isa stops moving. Her body seems to unclench, her mottled limbs unfurling. Her blood keeps spilling onto the street, however, staining the men’s boots and the dirty ground around them.

The men turn, and walk away.

They leave Isa’s body behind, like it’s trash, something to be overlooked, something wholly unremarkable.

Gallamby shuts the projector off. He looks inordinately pleased as he surveys the cadets.

“Let’s hear some initial thoughts on technique,” he says, like this is just another lesson, like they have not just witnessed the brutal beating and killing of a woman on a Coruscant street, possibly just below their feet. “Sward?”

Cassian looks up, meeting Gallamby’s eager eyes. He swallows the blood in his mouth.

“Coordination,” he manages to say, impressing and surprising himself with how neutral his voice sounds. “The men instinctively knew when to step back and let another land a blow. In doing so, they kept one another safe, and unexposed from retaliation.”

Gallamby nods as Cassian speaks, and when he finishes, Gallamby’s face erupts in a pleased smile. Cassian keeps his face impassive, even as his hands tighten into fists under his seat, even as he desperately wants to attack Gallamby like Gallamby’s friends attacked Isa.

“Excellent observation,” says Gallamby, and he proceeds to go into a long-winded explanation of fighting as a group versus fighting solo.

Cassian wonders if anyone in the Rebellion knows that Isa’s dead.

As soon as Gallamby’s class lets out, Cassian bolts for Asori’s office.

He’s usually more subtle, usually not as obvious or quick, and never goes to see her without having an invitation first.

He knocks on her office door, hears her voice call sternly, “Yes,” and throws open the door.

He only has time to see her face, the way her eyebrows rise in surprise, before he’s turning, and emptying the contents of his stomach into her garbage bin.

“ _Sward_ ,” she hisses, and Asori is on her feet, shoving past him to slam the door closed.

She waits until Cassian has finished vomiting before approaching him, turning him to face her with a hand on his elbow. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, shaking his head.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he says.

“Kriff,” Asori mutters. “I’m not worried about the bin, although I will be taking it out very soon. What the hell is going on?”

She guides him to the chair on the other side of her desk, and Cassian finds himself staring at the desk more intently than he ever has before. It’s made of gray Quadanium steel, an unusually strong and durable type of steel, used almost exclusively for and by the Empire. The piece that makes up Asori’s desk is beaten, with scorch marks marring the surface; she’s told him before that it was once the bulk of an Imperial Walker that was brought down near the end of the Clone Wars. The Empire hadn’t wanted to destroy what was still quite good Quadanium, and so had it repurposed to be a desk for the Royal Imperial Academy, a symbol of the Empire’s endurance and strength.

It’s a nice desk, he thinks, staring so intently at the gray metal that he barely notices Asori trying to get his attention.

He snaps out of it when she says his real name.

“ _Cassian_ , are you still with me?”

He looks up, and sees Asori standing next to him, leaning against the desk, looking at him with something close to concern.

“Sorry,” he says again. It seems to be the only word left in his vocabulary. He pulls himself together, rolling his shoulders, and meets Asori’s eyes.

“There’s a rebel,” he says. “Isa. I don’t know her surname. Have you met her? Heard of her?”

Asori frowns. “I think I’ve heard of her. Why?”

“She’s dead.”

“Ah,” Asori says. “I’m sorry to hear that. Were you close?”

Cassian laughs. He can’t help it. “No. I just… Gallamby just showed us. He knows the men who killed her.”

Asori is quiet for a moment, looking at Cassian, her face tense. She sighs.

“He does that. He likes watching people that he… people that he hates, the rebels… he likes watching them die.”

“I know,” says Cassian. He looks away, at his feet, and thinks, ridiculously, that he needs to polish his boots.

“It’s terrible,” says Asori.

“I know,” says Cassian, again. “And I’ve been expecting something like this. I’m not surprised.”

By that he means, _I can’t afford to be surprised_.

He’s visited by a memory of the dark trooper on Fest, how surprised he was at the horror, even when he knew he shouldn’t have been. This, he knows, is like that.

“It’s okay to be disturbed by this,” says Asori.

Cassian looks at her. “How do you do it? You must see footage like this all the time. How do you just… watch it all, and not do anything?”

Asori smiles, sadly. “Years and years of practice.” She pauses, and adds, “You’ll get used to it. I know that sounds impossible. But you will. You learn to disconnect from it all. Impassivity is survival.”

 _Survival_ is not a word Cassian thinks of often. But it’s in that moment that he fully understands that survival is all he’s doing. He isn’t really living, here at the Royal Imperial Academy. He’s finding new rebels, and he’s passing information onto the Rebellion. That’s his reality. That’s his life.

A survivor might be the only true, consistent thing that Cassian is. Not good. Not brave. Not any of those things his family have wanted him to be.

Just… a survivor.

Cassian has been a rebel for ten years. He’s been a _soldier_ for ten years.

Cassian is sixteen years old.

He worries that all he has to show for it is his survival, in spite of it all.

He doesn’t think this is good enough.

* * *

 

Isa’s death weighs heavily on Cassian. He finds himself moody, and irritable, and melancholic for weeks afterward.

It’s enough that even Daren, his somewhat-callous, a little oblivious, Imperial-devotee of a roommate, notices and decides to act on it.

Cassian hadn’t really wanted to room with Daren for a second year, but found that his roommate was a good source for understanding the mind of an Imperial. Cassian has always struggled with understanding why anyone would support the Empire, even though he grew up with a mother and a brother who did. He supposes his lack of understanding hasn’t been helped by losing them both before he knew the right questions to ask.

He can’t really ask Daren anything in particular, but he can observe, and that’s enough for now.

Daren notices Cassian’s general solemnity and downturn in mood, and suggests they visit the Uscru Entertainment District for a night out.

The Uscru Entertainment District is technically located in the Underworld, but to Cassian, and anyone else who’s _really_ lived and explored the Underworld, it might as well be on the surface. The District is populated with clubs and bars, and is typically jam-packed with crowds, eager to gamble, drink, and party. Cassian has never visited the District before, as he’s never had a reason to, and has always been too young to patron most of the establishments. But according to his legal scandocs, Joreth Sward is seventeen years old now, and that’s old enough to go to most of these places.

He agrees. Daren enlists a handful of others, and Cassian invites Ethan as well.

Ethan and Daren are much more enthusiastic about visiting the District than Cassian is. Ethan has gone a handful of times already, and comes prepared with knowledge of the best places to visit, having grown up on Coruscant with parents who know the planet very well. Daren is mostly just excited to get raucously drunk, and is not subtle in his suggestions that Cassian join him.

Cassian has never been much of a drinker, but figures he’s going to need alcohol to make it through a night out with Daren and his Imperial friends.

He finds himself liking the Uscru Entertainment District more than he expected.

Even if it barely feels like the Underworld, it is very much still the Underworld, and thus feels more welcoming to Cassian than the surface of Coruscant, where the Academy is. Cassian isn’t doing anything illicit or illegal, but he finds himself much more comfortable, knowing that most of the people around him are partaking in some form of criminal activity. He thinks this is helped by the fact that he isn’t wearing his cadet uniform, but rather, a new flight jacket that Wada had given him for his sixteenth birthday, gray trousers, and brown boots.

Joreth Sward has almost become Cassian’s real identity, even in his own mind, but tonight he feels more like Cassian Andor than he has in over a year.

He actually has to remind himself that he’s supposed to be Joreth.

His night is only improved when he and Ethan manage to escape Daren and the others.

Daren is three sheets to the wind at this point, and trying to hit on everyone in sight. After striking out for the tenth or so time, he slings an arm around Cassian’s neck, almost causing him to knock over Cassian’s glass of Rodian spice liquor.

“You’re a good roommate, Jor,” Daren says, slurring the words. “A good one.”

“Sure, Daren,” says Cassian.

“Real good,” he says again, and promptly passes out.

Daren’s friends find this hilarious, but also generously agree to take Daren back to campus with them. They leave Cassian and Ethan standing on the street outside the bar, watching them go.

“Where to?” Ethan asks.

“Let’s walk around a bit,” Cassian suggests. He’s a little drunk, but not too drunk to not be able to walk around the Underworld.

They set off. The streets are alive with colors and lights, and Cassian looks up at the flickering advertisements and changing faces. Ships and speeders race over their heads, of all kinds and models, originating on planets near and far. Cassian lets himself be buoyed by the crowd, listening to chatter in languages he recognizes and languages he’s never heard of before. He feels astonishingly relaxed, more than he has in months, maybe years, and cannot believe he has Daren to thank for it.

“Your roommate’s kind of a piece of work,” Ethan says, evidently thinking something similar.

Cassian shrugs. “He isn’t that bad. No worse than the others.”

“That isn’t very high praise.”

Cassian opens his mouth, to say what, he doesn’t know, when a voice calls his fake name.

He turns, and it’s, of all people, Wada.

“Wada!” Cassian calls, beaming.

Wada comes over, his green ears wiggling with delight. He and Cassian have not seen each other for almost three months, not since the start of term at the Academy.

He wraps Cassian in a hug that Cassian returns.

“It is nice to see you, Joreth,” he says, large bug-eyes widening in amusement at the name.

“You too, Wada,” says Cassian. “You remember Ethan?”

Wada had met Ethan, back when Cassian had first introduced Ethan and his family to the Rebellion at large. Wada nods, and shakes Ethan’s hand warmly.

“What are you two doing in Uscru?” He asks.

“Drinking!” Cassian says. He’s beginning to suspect he’s drunker than he thought.

“I see that, little one,” Wada says, eyeing him. Cassian thinks it’s pretty rich of Wada to call him ‘little one’ still, what with Cassian being taller than him now.

“Joreth’s been drinking Rodian liquor,” says Ethan.

Wada turns to Cassian, delighted. “An excellent choice, my friend.”

“You wanna join us?” Cassian asks.

He doesn’t think it’s much of a risk; if anyone from the Academy were to see him and Ethan out drinking in the Uscru Entertainment District with a Rodian, they could easily pass it off as them just having found a drinking buddy. And they are in the Underworld, a relatively safe space for the three of them.

Wada considers this, going through the same logic as Cassian. He nods, and then wraps an arm around Cassian’s shoulders, and the other around Ethan’s.

“I will, my young friends,” he says. “And I will take you to a proper Rodian bar, so we can drink all the Rodian liquor we want _properly_.”

Ethan groans, good-naturedly, as Wada guides them down the street.

Cassian laughs and laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Death Star was made of Quadanium steel. There are a handful of Death Star references/motifs in this story, alongside the repeated usage of the color gray.
> 
> The Uscru Entertainment District is, I believe, still canon. It's pictured in ATTACK OF THE CLONES, when Obi-Wan and Anakin track down that assassin in the bar and run into Jango Fett the bounty hunter. I think it's probably shown up in some of the animated series as well.


	22. The Psychic and The Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is sixteen years old when he is told his future.

Cassian is sixteen years old when he is told his future.

The Academy closes for a week, a break for the cadets and professors, and so Cassian packs a bag and returns to the Coruscant Underworld. Back in his civilian clothes, and deep in the Underworld, he feels himself relaxing, shaking off the identity of Joreth Sward, Imperial cadet, returning to his real identity, more or less, of Cassian Andor, longtime rebel and transplant from Fest.

Wada greets him at the elevator to take them to the Underworld, and hugs Cassian.

“How are your classes going?” He asks, punching the button to take them down below.

Cassian sighs. “Fine, I guess.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Wada says, smirking a little. He’s always gotten a kick out of Cassian having to go to school for the Rebellion, but also frequently reminds Cassian that as much as he hates it, he is receiving one of the best possible educations the galaxy has to offer.

“What are you doing this week?” Cassian asks.

Wada shrugs. “Might join a couple others at the Port to intercept a shipment. Nothing too fancy. What about you?”

“Hanging out with Ethan in a couple days.”

“I like him,” Wada says. “He’s a good one. Works hard. He’s a good friend for you, Cassian.”

“Yeah,” Cassian says.

Cassian follows Wada to his apartment on Level 4876, in the building that was once a Coruscant hotel called the Outworlder. They pass numerous rebels on their way to the building and inside it, and Cassian recognizes a good handful of them. Everyone who frequents headquarters calls Cassian by his real name; it’s only his recruits at the Academy who call him Joreth, a distinction Cassian is tremendously grateful for. It allows him to keep his polarizing selves separate, allows him to relax a little, when he’s among other rebels in the former hotel.

Inside the apartment, Cassian dumps his bag on the camp bed he will be sleeping in for the week, and goes to look out the window. Level 4876 isn’t too far from the surface levels of Coruscant, and sunlight filters in, casting shadows over the dark buildings, dark smoke and hazy steam pouring from the exhausts of restaurants and diners, grimy advertisements hanging in shop windows. A handful of illegally-modified speeders flash past the window, their drivers occasionally racing with Coruscant Underworld Police, members of the Coruscant Security Force, chasing after them.

Nothing about this should be safe or comforting, but it is, to Cassian Andor.

It’s almost home.

Wada comes in from his own room, carrying a small box. “I have something for you.”

“It isn’t my birthday,” Cassian says, automatically.

Wada laughs. “No, it isn’t, but this can’t wait. It is the kind of thing I wanted to give you right away, but also wanted to give you in person.”

Cassian frowns, having no idea what this mysterious gift could possibly be. He takes the box from Wada, sinking down onto his camp bed to open it, as Wada stands in front of him, arms crossed.

Inside the box is a hologram projector, only about the size of Cassian’s palm. He picks it up, and carefully turns it on.

His mother’s face stares back at him.

He hasn’t seen her in six years.

Cassian’s breath catches.

Serafima is young, much younger than she was when Cassian knew her. She looks to be in her mid to late teens, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and her hair is short like Nerezza’s was, curly and wavy and partially obscuring her face. The hologram is in shades of blue, but Cassian can recognize her big brown eyes, the same as his, and he is struck for the first time by how much he has grown to resemble her, now that he has evidence of her at an age very close to his current one.

“What is this, Wada?” Cassian asks, and his voice cracks.

“I went to Sernpidal a month ago,” Wada says. “I remember you mentioning once or twice that your mother was from there, and so I wondered if I could find any record of her. You mentioned too that she’d left the planet when she was seventeen. I went digging in some archives, and found quite a few records of Serafima Cassiano.”

Cassian finally tears his eyes away from his mother’s hologram image, looking up at Wada. “Cassiano?”

Wada frowns. “You didn’t know? Nerezza told me that was her name before she took your father’s on Fest. You were named after her, Cassi.”

“I didn’t know,” Cassian says, voice soft. His mother stares at him, face impassive.

“As it turns out, she might’ve changed her name to avoid being found,” Wada says. “Your mother was an accomplished smuggler on Sernpidal.”

Cassian can only listen, overwhelmed, as Wada tells him more about the mother he begins to wonder if he ever really knew.

“Her parents died when she was very young,” Wada continues. “She didn’t have any siblings, and she avoided the orphanages by working in ports and on ships. She was well-known for being reliable, not an easy feat, considering her age. Her last offense was her most egregious; she stole the ship of a well-known Sernpidal gangster. She was seventeen, and this seems to be what caused her to flee the planet. I couldn’t find any records of her after that.”

He nods at the hologram. “This was her last mugshot.”

Cassian nods, slowly, eyes locked on his mother’s teenage face. He’s desperately trying to understand and accept everything Wada has told him, but can’t quite do it. He never knew any of this about his mother, never imagined it was possible. To Cassian, she was always just his mother, the potter, quiet but determined, and inherently regal.

He realizes that she would’ve learned her authoritative posture on Sernpidal, when she was fighting for hardened criminals to give her a chance. She would’ve had to be intimidating, if she’d wanted to survive among the illicit and dangerous.

It’s something Cassian has also been forced to do.

He looks up at Wada. “Did she go to Fest right after? Or did she go somewhere else?”

Wada shrugs. “I don’t know. Nerezza never said, if she knew more.” He pauses, and adds, “It did not seem important to me at the time to find out more. I know she was your mother, but for the rest of us, she was an Imperial sympathizer on Fest.”

“Yeah,” Cassian says, voice soft, eyes back on his mother’s hologram image. “I wonder… If she was a criminal, if she was a smuggler, why would she support the Empire? They would’ve arrested her.”

Wada’s mouth is set in a stern line. “I don’t know. I couldn’t find anything on her parents, your grandparents, that might’ve explained why she believed the things she did. Perhaps something happened between leaving Sernpidal and meeting your father on Fest.”

“Yeah,” Cassian says again. He looks away from his mother’s face, back up to Wada. He turns the hologram off and gets to his feet.

“Thank you,” he says.

Wada shrugs, modest. “It was not much of a trouble. I was already in the Sernpidal archives for--”

Cassian cuts him off by hugging him, wrapping his arms around Wada’s shoulders. Wada is a couple inches shorter than him now, but Cassian can still remember how Wada seemed to tower over him when they first met, when Cassian was eight years old.

Cassian has known Wada for half his life.

He hopes Wada understands that he’s thanking him for a lot more than just the hologram of his mother.

From the way Wada hugs him back, he thinks he does.

* * *

Cassian goes to CoCo Town to meet Ethan a few days later.

He’s greeted at the door of Ethan’s parents’ apartment by Callista, Ethan’s mother, who hugs him. Cassian finds himself a little uncomfortable; between Wada and Callista, he’s been hugged more in the last few days than he had been in the six months before. Cassian isn’t averse to hugs, per se--as the baby of the Andor family, he has plenty of memories of being hugged by his siblings and his parents--but he isn’t quite used to them. Especially when they’re given so casually, like by Callista, in the doorway.

“It’s nice to see you, Joreth,” she says, pulling him inside.

“You too, Callista.”

Sebastian, Ethan’s little brother, peers around the corner. When he spies Cassian, he grins, racing over to his side and throwing his arms around Cassian’s waist. Sebastian is eight years old now, but still quite small, and Cassian laughs, returning the hug as best as he can.

“It’s nice to see you too, Sebastian.”

“Are you staying here, Joreth?” Sebastian asks. “Ethan is so _boring_ , and he doesn’t like talking to me, not like you do--”

Ethan appears, looking somewhat aghast at the sight of his mother and brother cornering Cassian.

“We’re leaving,” he says quickly, seizing Cassian by the arm and pulling him away.

Cassian laughs, but allows it, calling quick farewells to Callista and Sebastian as Ethan slams the apartment door closed.

“Are we in a hurry?” Cassian asks as Ethan pulls him towards the elevator.

“Actually, kinda, yeah,” Ethan says. “I found this place, and you’re definitely going to like it.”

“Why am I going to like it?”

Ethan looks around the elevator for a moment, which has Cassian immediately nervous, suddenly unsure what he’s about to say.

“Because,” Ethan says at last, when he’s ascertained that there aren’t any Imperial listening devices in the space. “I found a guy that might be able to help the Rebellion.”

“A guy.”

“A Sljee,” Ethan says.

Cassian stares. Sljee are non-humanoid creatures from the planet Sljee. They have six antennae, and an assortment of tentacles that they use to move their small, low bodies around. They’re only about a meter in height, completely gray, and completely blind, relying on their antennae for smell to get around. The vast majority of Sljee remain on their home planet, but they’ve been known to immigrate in small groups that stick together.

“I don’t speak Sljee,” Cassian says. “And I doubt you do either.”

“Don’t have to, Jor,” says Ethan. “This guy knows Basic.”

“That’s pretty unusual.”

“ _He’s_ pretty unusual. His name’s Jeseej. He runs a restaurant a few levels down in the Underworld, but what he really deals in are forgeries and information. If you know the right password, you can get in to see him and talk to him.”

Cassian smiles. “And you know the password.”

“I know the password.”

“I get now why you wanted to get out of there so quickly,” Cassian says.

They hop the nearest transport to take them to an elevator that will carry them to the Underworld. On the way, Ethan describes Jeseej’s restaurant more. It’s called Zlato’s Place, and serves, of all things, Toydarian dishes. Cassian has yet to meet a Toydarian, humanoid creatures with wings, tusks, and blue-green skin. Toydarians are from Toydaria, but have been known to venture around the galaxy, often dealing with other creatures from other Outer Rim worlds. It is no surprise then that they also live on Coruscant, which, despite being in the Core Worlds region, attracts a whole host of distant species and creatures.

Zlato’s Place is an unassuming, nondescript restaurant located on Level 4921 of the Underworld. It smells, unsurprisingly, of fish and algae. (These are the two staples of a Toydarian diet, something Cassian is not too thrilled about.) But it’s clean, and half-full, and so Cassian and Ethan approach the Toydarian host.

“Two for today?” The Toydarian asks.

“Yes,” says Ethan. “My friend and I are starving, and we’d like to avoid going Base Delta Zero.”

This last phrase alarms Cassian, while the Toydarian flaps its wings with more force. He’s heard the phrase “going Base Delta Zero” around the Academy; it’s slang among Imperial officers for going crazy with rage.

(Base Delta Zero is also an Imperial code for devastating a planet.)

Cassian’s fairly sure it’s the kind of language one wants to avoid while in the Underworld, but Ethan looks remarkably calm. Even stranger, the Toydarian does as well. It inclines its head.

“What will you be eating today?” The Toydarian asks, which Cassian also finds quite strange, considering they’re still standing at the front of the restaurant.

“The Toydarian fish special sounds good,” says Ethan.

And this whole thing, Cassian realizes at last, was the elaborate password needed to see Jeseej. The Toydarian nods, beckoning them with one three-fingered hand. Cassian lets Ethan walk ahead of him, as the Toydarian guides them through the half-full restaurant, the patrons so entirely disinterested in everything that they don’t even look up from their meals to watch the proceedings.

The Toydarian host leads them through the kitchen, where a handful of other Toydarians are working, a few of them looking up to watch as Ethan and Cassian pass. They don’t say anything though, as the host reaches an unmarked door at the back of the kitchen. The Toydarian host knocks once before opening it, standing aside and gesturing for Ethan and Cassian to go through.

The room is dark, and small, featuring only a small table, a few candles, and a couple of chairs. Sitting on the other side of the table is a Sljee, instantly recognizable. Its antennae are whirring, shifting from side to side, and Cassian feels his skin erupt in gooseflesh at its harsh breathing.

“Come sit,” the Sljee says at last.

“You’re Jeseej?” Ethan asks, as he and Cassian sink into the two chairs opposite the Sljee.

“Yes,” says Jeseej. “And you two are…” He pauses, and then his antennae move more forcefully. “Humans. Young ones.”

“I’m Ethan, and this is Joreth,” says Ethan.

The Sljee begins to wheeze then, and before Cassian can feel too alarmed, he realizes he’s mistaking the Sljee’s _laughter_ for wheezing. He feels distinctly disadvantaged, wishing the Sljee had eyes so he could read him more clearly.

This wish is only amplified by Jeseej’s next words.

“You are Ethan,” he says. “But the young man next to you is not Joreth.” His antennae flicker towards Cassian then. “Who are you?”

Cassian finds himself standing without realizing he’s moved. He can feel Ethan’s bewildered gaze on him, but he only has space to focus on Jeseej.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He hisses. His feet are itching, and he prepares himself to run.

“Don’t flee, boy,” Jeseej says. “Relax. I am on your side.”

“You’re a mind reader.”

“Fortune teller,” Jeseej says. “With an added… touch.”

It’s Ethan who puts it all together first. “You’re force-sensitive.”

Cassian knows very little about force-sensitive people. He knows that every jedi was force-sensitive, and that the Empire now keeps an eye on people with the ability. He knows these people have been known to have telepathic abilities, to move objects with only their minds, to influence the will of others.

Jeseej is suddenly infinitely more suspect, and dangerous.

“Let’s go,” Cassian says to Ethan.

“Do you not want to hear what you came for?” Jeseej asks. “You’re hoping to open a connection with me on behalf of your Rebellion. I was wondering when rebels would show up in my restaurant.”

“You know something that can help us?” Ethan asks. He’s still sitting, something Cassian almost hates him for, while Cassian is still hovering near the door, ready to run.

“Certainly,” says Jeseej. “I know quite a lot that could help your little Rebellion. But your mysterious friend here is very wary of me.” His antennae swirl back in Cassian’s direction. “Very hard to read, too. What a murky, gray future your friend is facing.”

“How much is a fortune reading?” Ethan asks.

“Ethan,” Cassian starts, but Jeseej cuts him off.

Jeseej’s tentacles are now also moving, tapping the floor. “I will read your fortune for free, Ethan, if I can also read your friend’s. Him, I am quite curious about.”

Ethan twists around in his chair, blue eyes staring up at Cassian. “Come on, man. It’ll be fun.”

“Yes,” Jeseej says. “It will be fun.”

“I don’t think so,” says Cassian.

“Then I am afraid I cannot help you at all,” says Jeseej. “That is my deal. I will know your fortune, and you will know my information that can help your Rebellion.”

Cassian understands then, how Jeseej is able to run an underground business like this on Coruscant, even as a Sljee, so unknown and misunderstood. He’s smart. He’s talented. And he knows exactly what his customers want, and how to manipulate them to get what _he_ wants.

Cassian has sacrificed his childhood for the Rebellion. He’s sacrificed his home, and he’s witnessed both his father and his sister sacrifice their lives for the Rebellion. He’s lost his youthful innocence and naivety for the Rebellion, has given up a whole other life for this chaotic and uncertain one.

Cassian is sixteen years old.

He sits back down in the chair, aware that he’s sacrificing his privacy, and his mind, for the Rebellion now.

He doesn’t need a fortune teller to tell him that he’s given his future to the Rebellion.

Jeseej’s antennae twitch with joy. “Good. I will begin with Ethan. That should help calm you, no?”

It doesn’t, not really. But Jeseej keeps it short. He grips Ethan’s hand in his antennae, focusing them downward on Ethan’s skin. He tells Ethan that he has a long life ahead of him, that he’ll become the pilot he’s always dreamed of being. He does warn Ethan that the next couple of years will be marred by a tragedy, that something dark will happen and upend Ethan’s life forever. When Ethan begs for clarification, Jeseej only pulls his antennae away.

“We cannot know more,” he says. “We would damage the future.”

Cassian is skeptical of this excuse, but Ethan accepts it. He leans back in his chair, rubbing his hands together, rubbing where Jeseej’s antennae have left marks in his skin.

Jeseej’s antennae immediately flicker over to Cassian. “Now, what do I call you?”

“Joreth,” says Cassian, firmly.

“Not right, not right,” says Jeseej, as his antennae wrap around Cassian’s hand. The antennae are oddly sharp, and Cassian wonders if they have spikes on the outside that the Sljee uses to smell. Cassian fights the urge to tear himself away, biting his lip instead, and staring at Jeseej as he runs his antennae over Cassian’s skin.

The Sljee titters. “You have a very cold past,” he says. “Very gray indeed. And tragic. I see your family now. How sorry you must be.”

“I thought you were going to tell me my _future_ ,” Cassian snaps. He’s aware of Ethan watching the exchange, but thankfully, Ethan doesn’t comment.

“It is much of the same,” Jeseej says. His gray body ripples as he turns Cassian’s hand over. “I did not joke when I said your future was murky. And gray. You’re as gray as I am… Joreth.”

“Okay.”

“Not long, not long,” Jeseej says. “Your death approaches. You will not have a long life.”

(He won’t. Cassian’s death is ten years away.)

“But you already knew that. You--Oh. Yes. I see. So that is how you die. Do you want to know?”

“No,” Cassian says, at the same time that Ethan blurts, “Yes!”

Cassian turns, glaring at Ethan.

Ethan shrugs. “Kriff, man, I’d want to know.”

“I see it, but it is… confusing,” Jeseej says, evidently ignoring the boys, and speaking to himself, more or less. “It’s very gray. You are killed by a moon.”

Silence falls in the small room.

“A moon,” Cassian repeats, skepticism creeping into his voice. He’s not sure he’s ever heard of such a thing.

“That is what it seems to be,” says Jeseej, and he actually sounds uncertain. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. But this is the thing that kills you. A gray monolithic thing, not unlike yourself, Cas--”

“Do not finish that sentence,” Cassian says hurriedly. He feels cold, and scared, because it was one thing to think Jeseej was lying, or giving vague, generic answers, but knowing Cassian’s real name is a whole other area of danger.

Jeseej laughs again, his disconcerting, wheezing laugh that only adds to Cassian’s anxiety.

“You are trapped,” he says. “You carry your own prison with you, everywhere you go. You think the Academy is what is binding you? Think again. You live in a prison of your own making, and you will never escape it!”

Cassian yanks his hand out of the Sljee’s antennae. He rubs his hand furiously, running his fingers over the marks left by the antennae.

“I think that’s enough,” he says.

The anger in his voice must say as much; Jeseej only nods. He hops off his chair, scuttling across the room. His tentacles and antennae flicker open a safe, from which he withdraws a stack of datapads. He returns to the table, dumping them on the surface.

“Where shall we begin?” He asks.

* * *

Cassian and Ethan are quiet on the transport back to CoCo Town.

He can practically feel Ethan buzzing next to him, his friend bursting with questions from the fortune reading from Jeseej. Cassian does not want to talk about it. He doesn’t think he’s learned anything, isn’t convinced that his death had been correctly prophesied ( _A moon_ , he thinks, with derision) and would find the whole affair a bust, save for the information Jeseej has given them, with an aside that they are welcome to return for more anytime.

Cassian thinks he’ll send someone in his place. He doesn’t want to see Jeseej again, hear Jeseej’s scornful voice, the way he yells at Cassian about a prison.

_You live in a prison of your own making, and you will never escape it!_

He swallows, hard. This is the one bit he thinks Jeseej might not have been wrong about.

Cassian has felt trapped for a long time. Being a spy in the Royal Imperial Academy has long put a strain on his mind and body, has long caused him frustration and pain. Even being a rebel, a soldier, has traumatized and devastated him. He has no identity outside of the Rebellion, was never given an opportunity to create one.

He has no escape. He only has this one existence as a rebel soldier.

It is something that Cassian chose, but in this moment, something that he wonders he might come to regret.

He feels Ethan’s hand wrap around his arm, and he looks up.

“I’m sorry,” Ethan says.

“It’s fine,” says Cassian. “He told us what he wanted, and we agreed, for the Rebellion.”

“Still. It feels… It doesn’t feel good.”

Cassian laughs a little. “Working for the Rebellion does not usually feel ‘good’, Ethan.”

Ethan nods. He hesitates, but gives in, with a statement: “Your real name isn’t Joreth Sward.”

“It isn’t,” says Cassian, because he doesn’t want to lie.

“Why do you use a fake name?”

“I’m connected to someone fairly high up in the Empire,” says Cassian. He has no idea where Zeferino is or what he’s doing for the Empire, but is pretty confident this sentiment stands. “It was decided, when I entered the Academy, that I’d have to use a pseudonym to avoid detection.”

“I see,” says Ethan. He frowns, looking down at his hand, still gripping Cassian’s arm. “If I asked… Would you tell me your real name?”

“Yes,” says Cassian, without hesitation. He decided this a while ago, when he met Ethan and his other recruits, and needed to earn their trust.

He readies himself, expecting the question.

But Ethan doesn’t ask.

He squeezes Cassian’s arm and then pulls away, leaning back against the transport window.

“A gray moon, huh?” He says instead, and Cassian can only snort.

“I can’t even imagine what that’d be like,” Cassian says.

He feels light, and oddly peaceful. Ethan has just given him his full trust, has reminded Cassian that he’s fully committed to the Rebellion, that he trusts Cassian’s guidance and opinions, without knowing everything about him.

It is more than Cassian ever expected.

“It doesn’t sound very pleasant,” Ethan says.

Cassian laughs. “I imagine it won’t be.”

He isn’t too concerned. Gray moons litter the galaxy. It’d be a waste of his time to keep an eye on any of them.

(A gray moon will not, of course, be the cause of Cassian Andor's death. It will be something far more sinister, more unnatural than that. But Jeseej can be forgiven for his lack of articulation; he was looking at something that did not yet exist, and should not have ever existed.)

Cassian is sixteen years old.

His death is inevitable, and he doesn’t doubt Jeseej when he says it isn’t far away.

But Cassian doesn’t need a fortune teller to know that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the "that's no moon!" joke is kind of old news, but I still think it's good, and also feeds into this recurring theme of unnaturalness, and then fits into the gray/moon/Death Star motifs that reoccur as well.
> 
> There is no canon info about Cassian Andor's mother; everything about her in this story was entirely made up by me, including this idea that Cassian was named after her.
> 
> Jeseej was an EU character, a psychic on Coruscant who ran a restaurant that was a front for his other, uh, business ventures. The stuff about the password, and the vague "price" for a reading came from there.
> 
> Please feel free to drop a line if you like the story, or heck, if you have any questions about what is EU canon or not. I will respond to any/all feedback, like, instantly, and would love to talk about it. Or, I mean just a line saying you are reading and I'm not just shouting into The Void.


	23. Sniping Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is seventeen years old when he learns how to use a sniper blaster rifle, culminating in a great personal cost to his mental health that forever scars him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a Grim chapter, so be warned.
> 
> It is not the first instance of Cassian's gray morality, but it is perhaps the most obvious, and first really difficult one.

Cassian is seventeen years old when he learns how to use a sniper blaster rifle, culminating in a great personal cost to his mental health that forever scars him.

It is Gallamby who teaches him how to use a sniper rifle.

He corners Cassian before his class one day, and asks Cassian to stay behind after for a short chat.

Cassian can think of few things he’d be less interested in doing, but agrees, because he’s a second year cadet at the Royal Imperial Academy, and his Captain wants to speak to him. All he can hope is that Gallamby will tell him something worth hearing.

After the rest of the class has filtered out, Gallamby leads Cassian to his office. Once there, he settles behind his desk, while Cassian stands, straight-backed in front, and waits.

Gallamby looks at him. “At ease, Sward.”

Cassian lets his shoulders relax. Gallamby leans back in his chair, opening a drawer on his desk, and pulls out a small container of cigarettes.

He holds the container out towards Cassian, who recognizes the invitation, and accepts one.

Cassian has only smoked a handful of times. He doesn’t enjoy it very much, but he’s seen quite a few senior Imperial officers smoking, and understands it to be a frequent source of relaxation among them, almost a pastime, one that builds a sense of camaraderie. So he’d decided to get used to smoking cigarettes, should he ever be presented with an opportunity to talk to an Imperial officer one-on-one in such a calm, candid state.

Such as this.

“Good,” Gallamby says, lighting Cassian’s cigarette as he takes the container back. He lights up as well, and looks at Cassian in silence for a moment, before abruptly rapping his knuckles against his desk.

“Do you know what this desk is made from, Sward?”

Cassian looks at it. He’s never bothered to pay special attention to the desk; it’s made of gray metal, like all the other desks in the Academy, but Gallamby’s seems to be unique. It doesn’t look quite like Asori’s desk, so Cassian knows it isn’t made of Quadanium. He looks more closely at Gallamby’s desk now, and spots the lines of a familiar dark gray metal that intersects and spirals across the desk’s surface, and frowns.

“It seems to partially be made of phrik, sir,” he says.

Gallamby grins, and Cassian knows he’s right. “Very good. Most of the desk is your basic steel, but there are some snippets of phrik in it too. Phrik is too valuable to be used entirely as a desk, but every now and then we get some pieces too small to do much with besides stick in a desk. Makes it as smooth as the surface of a neutron star. Very nice stuff indeed.

“They’ve got phrik on Fest, right?” Gallamby asks.

This is only the second time Gallamby has referenced Cassian’s homeworld. Cassian nods.

“Yes, sir.”

“Ever seen any?”

“Just a handful, sir,” says Cassian, which is the truth, quite literally.

“I imagine it’s especially valuable on that frozen rock,” Gallamby says, and Cassian keeps his face composed. Cassian is quick to disparage Fest, to condemn its iciness and barren nature, but he suddenly wants to rise to its defense at Gallamby’s comment. He holds his tongue though, and says nothing.

Gallamby straightens, turning to face Cassian. “Sward, you’re the best cadet I’ve got.”

This compliment seems to come from out of nowhere, and Cassian blinks. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re bright. You’re dedicated. The Empire is lucky to have you here.”

“Thank you, sir,” says Cassian.

“You’re almost _too_ good,” Gallamby says. “I bet the Empire’s gonna ship you off to Imperial Intelligence rather than the Navy when you graduate from the Academy. A loss for our Navy; we could definitely use a soldier like you.”

Cassian swallows, but inclines his head at the compliments. He can’t help but think of Zeferino, of his brother likely working in Imperial Intelligence, and wonders if that’s where he’s also going to go. He doesn’t even know exactly what he’ll do once he’s graduated from the Academy; likely return to the Rebellion full-time.

“But, if you’re gonna be in Intelligence, which you almost certainly will be,” Gallamby continues. “There’s one thing I can teach you better than about anyone else. Know what that is?”

“No, sir.”

Gallamby anticipates this response. Without warning, he reaches under the desk and pulls out a sniper blaster rifle. It looks like almost any other blaster Cassian has seen; it’s black, and heavy-duty, and probably lighter than it looks. But the sniper rifle is long, and has a bipod attached to it, and an iron sight lens.

“The best Intelligence officers are also the best snipers,” he says.

Cassian nods, staring at the sniper rifle. He’s never used one before, never had an opportunity to learn.

“I’m an accomplished sniper myself,” Gallamby says. “And I’d like to teach you. What do you think about that?”

Cassian looks away from the rifle, and back to Gallamby.

He doesn’t have to fake his smile this time.

* * *

 Gallamby starts teaching Cassian the next week.

He starts by showing him how to assemble an Imperial sniper rifle. This takes some time; there are more components to this blaster than Cassian is used to, of varying size and length, and they’re easy to confuse. Gallamby is surprisingly patient with Cassian through this process, calmly correcting him and instructing him to start over whenever he makes a mistake.

He behaves similarly when Cassian moves on to shooting. Cassian has had plenty of practice shooting blasters before, but he’s never had to do so at such far distances. Gallamby stands next to him, hour after hour, calmly coaching and offering Cassian tips on technique and skill. He’s straightforward, and concise, and unexpectedly understanding.

His teaching style, in this way, for the first time, reminds Cassian of Wada.

Cassian hasn’t seen or spoken to Wada in months, not since he gave Cassian the hologram of Serafima. It is the first time since they’ve met that Cassian hasn’t gotten to see Wada on his birthday. Cassian hasn’t been able to return to the Underworld or the Rebellion, with the rigor of the Academy amping up over the term. He’s passed on his intelligence and recruit information to Asori, solely, instead.

Cassian misses Wada. He makes a note to himself to visit Wada as soon as he possibly can, hopefully in the near future.

After almost four months of shooting on targets in the shooting range at the Academy, Gallamby tells Cassian it’s time for some practical exercise. Cassian isn’t sure what this means, but he follows Gallamby off-campus.

He’s surprised when Gallamby leads him to an elevator to go to the Underworld.

“Where are we going, sir?” Cassian asks, staring out the elevator as they zip downwards, past level after level. He feels suddenly quite nervous, in his Imperial cadet uniform, standing beside a Captain in the steel gray uniform of an Imperial officer.

“Lemniscate,” says Gallamby. He looks at Cassian. “You ever hear of it, Sward?”

Cassian nods. Lemniscate is an Imperial prison, located somewhere in the Coruscant Underworld. It was built soon after the rise of the Empire, expressly for the purpose of detaining defectors, and Republic-sympathizers who wanted no part in the Empire.

Cassian suddenly has a very bad feeling about all of this.

Lemniscate is located all the way down on Level 1238. The air is thick and polluted, and Cassian gratefully accepts the breath mask that Gallamby shoves at him. The actual prison is huge, and imposing, made entirely of some kind of black stone, and it practically blends into the darkness that seeps into the level, so far below the surface it is.

Cassian has a _very_ bad feeling about this.

He follows Gallamby into the prison, where stormtroopers shuffle down dark corridors and hallways. Cassian and Gallamby are signed in, their scandocs taken and verified. Cassian feels his anxiety mounting by the second. He can see cameras at every angle in the hallways, on the walls, dangling from the ceiling. He feels terribly exposed, even with his scandocs and the identity he’s been using for two years without trouble.

Gallamby puts a hand on Cassian’s shoulder, and guides him further into the prison.

Cassian can hear prisoners screaming, and even worse, wailing in abject misery. There’s a din of alarms and incessant beeping, whirs of droids and unknown machines alike. The cells they pass are completely closed off, without bars, only with a tiny window near the top of the solid doors for any sight of the space within, or the hall outside.

An IT-O interrogator droid passes by, hovering five feet off the floor. The syringe on its left side is empty, the needle at the end dripping blood.

Cassian looks away, forcing his gaze down, to the gray stone floor.

Gallamby leads him to an unmarked door. He knocks once, and they walk inside.

A man is standing on the other side of the room, looking out one of three opened windows that make up most of the back wall. A sniper rifle is set up next to him, pointed ineffectively at the floor. The man appears to be completely bald, and wears his gray officer’s cap tight just above his eyes, his hands folded neatly at the small of his back. He turns when the door closes behind Gallamby and Cassian.

The man’s smile is that of a predator. “Hello, Ress.”

“Nice to see you, Kyle,” Gallamby says, abandoning Cassian to cross the room and shake the man’s hand. He turns, and waves Cassian over.

“This is the cadet I told you about,” Gallamby says. “Joreth Sward. Sward, this is Admiral Kyle Melkans. He runs Lemniscate.”

“An honor to meet you, sir,” says Cassian, shaking Melkans’ hand.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Cadet Sward,” says Melkans, still smiling that predator-like grin. “My friend here speaks very highly of you. You must be good.”

“I try, sir.”

“He’s being modest,” says Gallamby. “Sward is the best I’ve got.”

Melkans’ smile only grows.

Gallamby walks away from them, peering out the windows. “Oh, yes. This will do very nicely.” He turns back around and beckons Cassian. “Look. See what Admiral Melkans has provided for you.”

Knowing he does not want to look out the window, Cassian walks over.

He looks out the window.

A wave of nausea passes over him.

He’s looking out over a courtyard of sorts. It looks to be 300 meters below the room he’s standing in, and an open space, where about twenty prisoners are loitering, standing together or running in slow jogs around the perimeter. None of them are looking up. None of them appear scared, or defensive, or showing any sign that something is about to happen.

Cassian looks at the sniper rifle next to him.

He wishes he didn’t understand.

He wishes he were anywhere else in the galaxy.

“Practice makes perfect,” Gallamby says.

Cassian approaches the rifle like he’d approach a dangerous creature. He’s had plenty of time in the last few weeks to practice with a sniper rifle, has spent hours shooting on campus with targets painted on walls and moving droids, has poured over textbooks and information manuals to learn specifications and technique.

This… This is something else entirely.

These are prisoners. People. Weaponless, unprepared, unaware. Defenseless.

Cassian cannot possibly do this.

Cassian must do this.

He has no choice.

He raises the bipod to his level and leans forward, pressing his eye to the iron sight lens. Cassian’s hair is military-short, has been for the past couple years, and he isn’t wearing a cap like Gallamby or Melkans, and so he doesn’t have to adjust any aspect of his appearance for ease of what he’s about to do.

He wishes he had to.

Maybe, then, he could pretend that it isn’t him that’s about to do this.

He turns the lens, so it focuses in on the people 300 meters below.

He sees a Wookiee, bouncing a ball against the far wall. He sees a pale-skinned man with bright red hair lying on the floor, eyes closed, trying to take a nap. He sees a Utapaun, extraordinarily tall, with ashen skin, kicking a small stone around the courtyard.

“What’s your first step, Sward?” Gallamby asks, his voice coming from somewhere far away.

Cassian sees a man with dark hair, and as he focuses the lens on the man’s face, sees that he has brown eyes similar to Cassian’s, and warm tan skin in a shade not dissimilar to Cassian’s. The man is talking to a Togruta next to him, the two of them standing in the center of the courtyard.

“Get an eye on the targets, sir,” says Cassian.

He counts out all twenty of them. He memorizes their faces, their expressions. The color of their eyes, their hair. What they are doing, who they are talking to.

He takes a breath.

He starts shooting.

Cassian has always been a good shooter, has spent over a decade practicing in real conditions, in the streets of Fulcra and in the Underworld of Coruscant. But in those conditions, he’d been forced to shoot, because someone was shooting back, was trying to kill him.

He’s killed before, certainly.

But this is different. This feels like murder.

He’s an executioner.

Cassian is seventeen years old.

The prisoners in the courtyard are screaming, but Cassian cannot listen to them. He turns the rifle to the side and back, taking each man and creature down with a single headshot. They have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, but they try, anyway. They pound on the doors leading out of the courtyard. One or two attempt to climb the completely smooth black walls to escape their deaths.

The very best thing Cassian can do, the only thing, is to be quick, and efficient.

He kills the first nineteen within a minute. The last one is the man who looks a little like Cassian, and Cassian cannot help but be unsurprised by this.

Of course he’d have to reckon with this particular man.

He shoots at him, but misses; the man unexpectedly ducks and twists at the last second, and Cassian tries to follow, but accidentally clips his hip rather than his head. The man falls, screaming in a language Cassian does not understand. He pants on the floor for a moment, and then crawls, until he reaches a corner of the courtyard. He crouches there, curling himself into the fetal position, now openly sobbing.

Cassian focuses the lens on the man’s face. He sees the man’s tears, his wide brown eyes, wide with shock and confusion and horror and all-consuming terror.

Cassian sees himself.

He shoots, and the man stops screaming.

Cassian straightens, leaning away from the rifle. He can no longer see the courtyard as clearly now; from this vantage point, he can only see twenty bodies lying far below, in various positions and states, with dark blood spilled around each body’s head, all completely still.

“That was excellent, Cadet Sward,” says Melkans. “You were right, Ress. He’s very talented.”

Gallamby claps Cassian on the shoulder, spinning Cassian to face him. Cassian cannot be certain of what his own expression is, but it must not betray what he’s really feeling, because Gallamby is beaming.

“Twenty in just over a minute, from 300 meters up,” Gallamby says. “Couldn’t have done it much better myself. You’ll be shooting Rebs in no time. Intelligence is definitely going to want you, but sweet mother of chaos, am I going to fight to keep you in the Navy.”

Gallamby laughs, as does Melkans, and their laughter seems to echo around the room. Cassian blinks, fighting to keep himself oriented, fighting to keep himself from screaming.

Gallamby’s voice is still so full of unadulterated delight.

“Sward… You’re _good_.”

* * *

Without pausing to consider the consequences, or to create a mental pros and cons list, Cassian packs a weekend bag as soon as he returns to his room, and prepares to escape to the Coruscant Underworld for a couple of days.

He needs to be Cassian Andor again, if only for a day or two.

He needs to see Wada, and he needs to hear Wada’s wise advice. He needs to know he did the only thing he could do, the thing expected of him, as a rebel spy, deep undercover within the Royal Imperial Academy.

(What he really needs is absolution.)

Daren, lounging on his bed across the room, watches as Cassian prowls across their shared space, gathering his civilian clothes and boots and tossing them into his open bag. He watches in silence as Cassian reluctantly pulls his Academy uniform jacket back on; he’s required to wear the uniform at all times while he’s on campus, though he plans to change as soon as he gets to Wada’s apartment.

Cassian is snapped out of his thoughts when Daren speaks: “You okay?”

Cassian pauses for a moment before continuing with his manic packing. “Yeah. Why?”

“You seem…” Daren trails off, then shrugs. “I don’t know. Upset.”

“I’m not upset,” says Cassian, who has to fight to keep his voice even and disinterested. He knows Daren’s right, knows he’s quite upset, and becomes even more upset with himself for expressing it enough that _Daren_ could pick up on it. “I’m tired. This was a long week.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Daren says, nodding. “But uh… Look, Joreth, if you, like, ever want to talk or anything… I’ll listen, yeah?”

That gets Cassian to still. He turns, taking in his roommate, his dusty blond hair and freckles. Daren’s eyes are narrowed, but earnest, and he blinks calmly at Cassian, and Cassian realizes that he believes Daren. He believes that he does want to listen, to help Cassian.

“Thank you,” Cassian says at last. “I will keep that in mind.”

“Yeah, okay,” Daren says. He returns to his holovid, which is playing some kind of Corellian holodrama. Cassian considers pausing, considers inquiring further, but finds he has no space in his mind to be courteous or polite.

He picks up his bag and walks out of the room.

He hurries across campus, looking at his boots, avoiding eye contact and desperately hoping no one spots him. No one seems to, as he makes it off campus without hearing Joreth’s name or directly bumping into someone he knows. He all but runs to the nearest transport, climbing on, not really caring where it’s taking him, he’s so intent on getting away from the campus.

Luckily, the transport takes him to a stop near an elevator to the Underworld, and from there he can walk to the hotel that houses the Rebellion once he’s on the right level.

Level 4876 looks the same as always, and Cassian finds himself calming as he walks through the streets. He knows he sticks out in his Academy cadet uniform, but as long as he keeps his head down and his legs moving, it won’t be a problem.

Of course, the problem is, Cassian _wants_ to look around. He wants to take in the familiar sights, smells, and sounds of Level 4876. The loud sirens of the Coruscant Underworld police cruisers as they pass over his head, the chatter of a thousand different languages, the hissing and snaps of fried food being prepared right on the sidewalk. He wants to see the ever-present, ever-glowing advertisements, for products and sporting events; he even wants to see the propaganda Imperial advertisements, because they’re so familiar to him they’re almost welcoming. He wants to smell the polluted air that seeps through every part of the Underworld, the gas leaking from rusty and broken speeders, the exotic food smells being wafted out of hole-in-the-wall diners and cafes.

Cassian walks through the crowds and breathes deeply, feeling his heart slow, feeling his body calm.

It’s a start. It’s something.

He reaches the repurposed hotel that now exists as the Coruscant Rebellion headquarters and walks inside.

He’s greeted with a flood of familiar faces, people lingering in the lobby, pausing to chat or go over maps and data. A few people nod at him, a few wave, and a few even greet him with his own name. Cassian feels a smile splitting his face, and he grips the strap of his bag as he heads towards the elevator.

“Andor!” A voice calls from behind him.

Cassian turns, and is greeted by Casher, the Anaxes refugee with dark hair and blue eyes. He jogs over to Cassian, who politely waits.

“Hello, Casher,” Cassian says, holding out his hand. Casher takes it. He looks a little ragged, a feeling (and look) Cassian relates to deeply.

“Hey,” Casher says. “Look, I just heard. I wanted to say that I’m so sorry.”

Cassian stares at him. He’s only just gotten back from Gallamby, from the prison, and has not told anyone in the Rebellion about what he’s gone through in the last few hours.

“How did you hear?” Cassian asks.

“Oh, uh, a couple of the other pilots were talking about it when I got here yesterday,” Casher says. “And I just felt awful, because you guys were so close, and he always spoke so highly of you, and--”

“Casher,” Cassian says, voice now dropped to a whisper. Ice is crawling up his spine, and his heart seems to have stopped, and _Oh, kriff, no_.

 _Not this_.

 _Not now_.

“Casher, what the hell are you talking about?”

Casher freezes. “Wait. You don’t know?”

Cassian shakes his head, suddenly clinging to his bag for dear life. “Casher. What the hell are you talking about.”

“Oh, dammit,” Casher murmurs. “Gods. I’m so sorry. I thought you would’ve heard by now.”

“Casher, tell me--”

“Wada’s dead, Cassian,” Casher says.

 _Wada’s dead, Cassian_.

“He was in a freighter that got shot down over the Port. But… this happened _months_ ago. Five months ago.”

_Five months ago._

Cassian has turned numb. He cannot feel his hands, cannot feel his legs, cannot feel anything at all, besides the ice cold dread that is spreading rapidly through him, starting in his chest, which suddenly aches with the pain of a stab wound.

Wada has been dead for five months.

Cassian had no idea.

Cassian blinks, and remembers the last time he saw Wada, when the Rodian gave him the hologram of Serafima, when he mentioned, so casually, so off-handedly, that he was thinking of joining a group to intercept a shipment at the Port.

Cassian had not heard from Wada since.

But Cassian had also not been able to go to the Underworld in five months. He’d been too caught up in his classes, his exams. And he’d been caught up in his recruiting work, and in building connections to Imperial officers. He’d been too focused on the Academy, and the Rebellion, and he hadn’t seen or heard from Wada in five months and he just… He accepted it.

But Wada had missed Cassian’s seventeenth birthday, and that should’ve been a sign.

Wada had been dead for two months by then.

No one had come to find Cassian, to tell him. No one had sent him a message. Asori had not intercepted him on campus to tell him to meet her in her office, or to go back to Rebellion headquarters. No one had decided to tell Cassian that Wada was dead.

He understands why they wouldn’t have told him.

Or, he makes himself understand.

He tells himself that he understands.

He has no choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemniscate was an EU prison, set in the Underworld, though I don't know the name of whoever ran it (hence Melkans).
> 
> This is your casual reminder that this is not, inherently, a happy story.


	24. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is seventeen years old, and ready to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter begins immediately after the end of the last chapter.

Cassian is seventeen years old, and ready to run.

Wada is dead.

Casher is, somehow, still speaking.

“... Didn’t think I’d be the one to tell you,” he says. “I really could’ve done it in a nicer way too. Damn. I’m really sorry, Cassian.”

“His freighter got shot down?” Cassian says, and his voice is still too soft, too shocked.

“Yeah,” Casher says. “Over the Port. Someone else saw it, and they came back to report. It was… It was completely destroyed. Nothing… Nothing was recovered.”

By that, Cassian understands to mean that they were unable to recover Wada’s body. There was nothing left of it.

No remains. No body. Nothing to suggest Wada was ever there.

“What happened to his things?” Cassian asks. “His possessions?”

“His apartment’s pretty much been left untouched,” says Casher. “We haven’t needed the space, and uh… I guess someone thought you’d eventually come back for his things. I think we all figured he’d have wanted you to have his stuff.”

Cassian nods, finally getting his hand to release the strap of his bag. He’s numb, feels coarse shock trembling in his bones.

Losing his father, and his mother, and his sister, were all traumatic events that shook him, sent his body spiraling into shock. But he saw them all coming. He saw his father leave, and he watched him die. He saw the beginnings of the firefight that would kill his mother, and he would stand next to her when she fell. And he watched Nerezza leave him in the hangar on Fest, and Wada was the one who found him after the battle, and led him to her body.

This shock is something else entirely. Because in spite of the war, the frequent death and devastation Cassian sees… He didn’t anticipate this. Wada was too reliable, too clever, too experienced, to die.

Wada followed Cassian from Fest, to Rodia, to Coruscant, to the Underworld.

Wada, of all people, wasn’t going to leave him.

“Thank you for telling me,” Cassian says.

“Sure,” Casher says. “I, just… Wada was a good man. I liked him a lot. We all did.”

“Yeah.”

“If there’s anything… You know, if we can help, just ask, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cassian says again. He thinks of Daren, saying the same thing. “I know. I’ll see you later, Casher.”

He turns, and quickly walks away. He can feel himself crumbling, knows he’s moments away from completely falling apart. He jams his hand against the elevator button, and thankfully, it opens quickly. He darts inside, pressing the button for Wada’s floor.

He stares at the doors, carefully avoiding his reflection.

The doors open a moment later. He walks down the long gray hallway, reaching Wada’s apartment door. He brushes his fingers against the keypad, and it opens for him.

Cassian walks inside.

It looks, more or less, the same as it did last time. The camp bed that Cassian slept on is still open in the front room, the blankets Cassian had slept with folded neatly at the end, just as Cassian left them. The screens covering the windows are left as Cassian had kept them, and cold filtered sunlight slants into the room.

He walks into the kitchen, noting the dirty dishes piled on the counter. He opens the conservator, but shuts it quickly, overwhelmed by the smell of rotting and decaying food.

Wada has not been here in a very long time indeed.

Cassian walks into Wada’s room. He’s never been in it before.

The bed is unmade, blankets tossed haphazardly, to indicate someone got up in a hurry and didn’t care to leave it neat, likely assuming they’d come back. Cassian looks into the closet, taking in the familiar sight of Wada’s jackets and shirts, his boots piled somewhat neatly on the floor. He turns away from the closet and moves to a small mobile box resting across the room. He pries the box open, and spots Wada’s guns, his beloved Rodian blasters and human blasters that he’d retrofitted for his use, what with Rodians having hands differently shaped from human hands. Cassian looks them over, freezing when he recognizes a smaller blaster nestled alongside all the others; it’s the Rodian DT-12 blaster Wada had given him for his thirteenth birthday, four years previously.

Cassian pulls it out, turning it over in his hands.

He straightens, and stares around the room.

He wishes he wasn’t shaking so much.

The place is messy, and there’s a fine layer of dust on every surface. The air is moldy, and dank, and the windows have almost sealed themselves shut from a lack of use. There are clothes on the floor, and hanging over a chair under the window. There’s an open toolkit at the end of the bed, and on the cabinet next to the top of the bed, are Wada’s personal possessions.

There are hologram projections, of Wada’s family, his long-dead parents and siblings. A more recent one, of his living sister, Geeta, and her two boys, Kolvo and Gik, who Wada brought Cassian to meet three years ago, after Cassian lost his sister.

The last hologram makes Cassian’s breath catch.

It’s him. He’s younger; he’d guess he can’t be older than twelve in the hologram, and he’s with Wada, and they’re in the repair room of the Fest Rebellion base, the room Cassian spent so much time in with Wada, tinkering on droids, learning how to fix ships, and listening to Wada’s kind, understanding, generous advice.

As he watches, his younger self says something, glancing up at Wada. The Rodian nods, and says something back, gesturing towards the bulky seismic disruptor they seem to be trying to repair or modify. Whatever Wada says must’ve been a joke, because younger Cassian laughs, and even Wada cracks a smile, the tips of his round green ears wiggling in amusement, and it is all just too much, too much.

Cassian is seventeen years old.

He stumbles back until he hits the wall. He slides down, dropping the Rodian pistol, and brings his knees up to his chest, burying his face in them.

He knows he’s alone, but instinctively, following years of secrecy and paranoia that the Empire is watching him at the Academy, he does his best to muffle his sobs in his knees.

Wada, Cassian’s great friend, his oldest friend, his mentor, his last remaining family from Fest, has been dead for five months.

_Cassian had no idea._

He loathes himself entirely for it.

He will never forgive himself for it.

* * *

There is no body to bury, no remains to hold a service over, and so Cassian packs up Wada’s personal possessions, his clothes, his boots, and his blasters, to take with him to Rodia, to tell Geeta what has happened to her brother.

He’s certain she doesn’t know, certain that the Rebellion would not have known to reach out to her. More likely, no one in the Coruscant Rebellion even knows of her existence.

But Cassian does. And he’d want to know that Wada was dead.

 _He should have known, how did he not_ know?

He has to wait another month, until the year at the Academy ends, and he gets four weeks away. Cassian is done with his second year at the Academy, but feels like this second year has lasted ten. It was just so emotionally draining, what with his close lessons with Gallamby, the incident at the prison, and now to cap it off, Wada’s sudden death.

Cassian is seventeen years old, but he is so tired, and he feels so much older than a teenager. He feels like he must have lived at least half a century, and not the reality, where Cassian has been alive for just under two decades.

(Cassian will not live past the age of twenty-six; he’ll be dead in nine years.)

As soon as he finishes his last exam, Cassian heads to the nearest Port, and boards a transport bound for the Outer Rim, planning to, from there, catch another transport to Rodia.

He does not tell anyone with the Rebellion that he’s leaving the planet.

Cassian understands why no one told him about Wada. He understands. It makes sense; the shock and devastation of it has completely upended his life, left him desolate, and unfocused. He barely made it through his final exams intact, and expects his assessments will be less glowing than normal.

He should harbor no ill will towards the Coruscant rebels for not telling him.

But he _does_.

He’s seventeen years old, and his best friend is dead.

He’s in shock, and angry, and he is desperate for a place to put his anger and blame.

Cassian has not told Geeta that he’s coming to visit, uncertain how to contact her. He only knows the way to her house, remembers visiting it, three years previously. His transport takes him to Rodia, to Betu, the continent Geeta lives on, and from there Cassian catches a last transport to the town closest to Geeta’s house.

He has to walk from the town to her home, but he doesn’t mind.

He’d almost forgotten how humid the air on Rodia was, what with the domes covering the settlements. He sweats as he walks, meanderingly, taking in the jungles that threaten to overtake the road, listening to the cries of birds and croaks of frogs, along with the squeaks and chirps of dozens of other unknown creatures.

Rodia is beautiful, and Cassian thinks he’d like to see an ocean before he leaves it again.

He never made it to any of the oceans the last time he was here, and the only other planet he’s visited that has oceans was Garqi, and he didn’t see any while he was there either.

Wada had been with him then, too.

Cassian stops in his walk, closing his eyes, trying to pull himself together. When he opens them again, he realizes he’s actually reached the end of the road, and is standing in front of Geeta’s house, and Geeta herself is standing there, staring at him.

They look at each other, and instantly, she knows.

“I’m sorry,” says Cassian, his voice floating over the hot air, barely audible over the noises of the jungle.

Geeta nods. “Come in, Cassian.”

Kolvo and Gik are away at school, and Geeta’s house is perfectly quiet, and still. Flowers are assembled in a vase on the table, and Geeta points Cassian to a seat.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, thank you,” says Cassian. He hasn’t been hungry since the prison.

Geeta leaves the room for a moment, returning next with a bottle of Rodian wine and two glasses. She pours them each a glass, and Cassian takes his, grateful.

Geeta lifts the glass. “To Wada.”

“To Wada,” Cassian agrees.

They drink.

Geeta sets her glass down, tapping a nail against the rough dark wood of the table. “How did my brother die?”

“His freighter was shot down,” says Cassian. “On Coruscant. He was intercepting a shipment. He… He died instantly.”

“Nothing left, huh?”

Cassian grimaces. Geeta does not seem too bothered by it.

“It is sad, but not unexpected,” she says.

“Not unexpected,” Cassian repeats.

“My brother was a rebel,” says Geeta. “He fought in as many wars as he could. He has, for decades now. He tempted death constantly. It finally caught up with him. I am sad to hear that he’s gone, but I am not surprised. That would be foolish.”

Cassian feels himself flushing, and he takes a gulp of wine to avoid a response.

Geeta catches him anyway. “You were surprised.”

“He died six months ago,” says Cassian. “I only found out a month ago.”

Geeta looks confused. “Were you not working together?”

“Not… Not really,” Cassian says. “I’m… I’m doing something else, for the Rebellion. Wada knew about it, but… I was… Away. We didn’t see each other much, the last two years.”

“Now, _that_ I am surprised and sorry to hear,” says Geeta. “Wada was very fond of you.”

“I know.”

“He loved you. You were the closest thing he ever had to a son.”

Cassian nods, fiddling with the glass, avoiding Geeta’s gaze by staring at the blood red wine instead. “Yeah. He was more of a father to me than my own father.”

Cassian knew Wada for eight years; he only knew Gabriel for six.

He wonders if he should be more bothered by this than he is.

“Shame,” says Geeta. She cocks her head, surveilling Cassian closely. “You look very different than you did the last time I saw you, Cassian.”

“That was three years ago, Geeta.”

“It’s not just that,” she says. “You were young in age then--I guess you still are now--but you were old in the face. It’s more than that now.”

“What is it?”

Cassian is pretty sure he doesn’t want to know the answer, but listens anyway.

Geeta stretches one green arm out, and brushes Cassian’s face, the suction-cups at the end of her fingers tickling his cheek. He keeps still, watching, waiting.

“You’re in crisis,” she says.

Cassian wonders if Geeta is force-sensitive. He considers asking, but decides it doesn’t matter.

“Yeah, you could say that,” he says instead.

“You do not have to do this, Cassian,” Geeta says, gently. “This war? You can walk away. It’s okay.”

Cassian almost smiles.

“I can’t,” he says. “I really can’t.”

“But why?”

“Wada’s dead,” says Cassian, and he swallows hard, acknowledging the words, but keeping them at bay, not letting them linger. “But the cause, _his_ cause, _my_ cause… is still very much alive. I still have everything to fight for. It’s still worth fighting for.”

The cause, the Rebellion, the push to dismantle the Empire and restore freedom and peace to the galaxy is _everything_ to Cassian. It’s always been important to him, of course, always been something he’s viewed as essential and necessary. But now, with his family all dead (or gone, in Zeferino’s case) Cassian realizes that the war is all he has left. His identity, his sense of self-worth, is all inextricably tied to the war. To the Rebellion.

Everything he does, _everything he is_ , is for the Rebellion.

_Everything we do, we do for the Rebellion. It’s justified._

_Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion._

_I’m justified_.

He remembers Sids’ words, and how he made them his own when he was nine years old. This is eight years later, and they are truer than ever.

He blinks, remembers the men at the prison he murdered, and forces their faces away.

 _I’m justified_.

Geeta looks at him, resting her face in her hand, tapping a finger against her cheek in thought. She considers his words, and comes to a conclusion. She nods.

“I see,” she says at last. “Wada felt the same as you do. I can only hope that you will never lose your conviction, Cassian Andor.”

* * *

Cassian only spends a week on Rodia. He and Geeta don’t really know how to act around each other without Wada, and they have very little in common without him. Kolvo and Gik take the news of their uncle’s passing harder than Geeta did; the boys, older now but still children, cry a lot, and spend the remainder of Cassian’s stay in their home doing their best to avoid him. Cassian knows it’s because the children have linked Wada’s death to his presence, and finds he doesn’t disagree, nor does he hold a grudge against the boys for it. It makes sense. He feels similarly, regarding himself.

He returns to Coruscant, back to the Underworld. He spends a day cleaning out Wada’s apartment, which he plans to make his own, since the Rebellion apparently has no need for the space. There isn’t much to do, besides throw out the rotten and decaying food, and dust every surface. Cassian has left all of Wada’s personal possessions with Geeta, for the boys and for her, but she’d forced a few things back on Cassian, a couple Rodian blasters, and one of Wada’s jackets, a bulky blue parka with a fur-lined hood.

“He wouldn’t have survived the cold of Fest without it,” Geeta says. “But neither I nor my boys will have much use for it on a warm planet like Rodia. I have a hunch, however, that you will need this kind of coat, more than once in your future.”

(She’s right, of course.)

Cassian hadn’t taken the hologram of him and Wada to Rodia. He’d decided to keep it without consulting Geeta. He’s certain that she’d be fine with this.

Once he’s finished cleaning the apartment and determined it’s clean enough for habitation again, Cassian finds himself at a loss for what to do next.

He still has another week until term begins at the Academy. All of his Academy friends have either gone back to their homeworlds to see their families, or they’re traveling, either around Coruscant or on other planets. Cassian has a few messages from Ethan, inviting him to visit him and his family in CoCo Town. If Cassian was feeling better, feeling more like himself, he’d certainly go.

But he isn’t. He doesn’t feel like himself.

He lays on Wada’s bed, now his bed, and stares at the ceiling.

Asori finds him like this, three days before term starts.

She looks sad, sadder than Cassian has ever seen her, sitting on the couch in the front room of the apartment, holding a cup of hot Ansionian tea. Cassian sits on the chair across from her, with his own untouched cup.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“I understand why you didn’t tell me,” says Cassian.

“But I didn’t want you to find out like you did, either,” says Asori. “I wanted to tell you. You deserved to hear it from me. Not so randomly, as you did.”

Cassian says nothing. He looks out the hazy window, at the bustling street below, the darkness that seeps from the surface down to this level of the Underworld.

“Are you okay, Cassian?” Asori asks.

Cassian considers what to say. He’s fairly sure the correct answer is _Of course I’m not okay_ , but isn’t convinced that he wants to give it. He hasn’t told Asori about what happened at the prison, about the men he killed. He thinks he probably should.

And he will. But later.

He might be punishing her, might be taking out his anger in an extremely petty, unprofessional way, but Cassian is seventeen years old and that’s the kind of thing seventeen-year-olds do.

“I will be,” he says, which is sort of the truth.

(Wada’s death is not something Cassian will ever recover from, not entirely, but so was Nerezza’s death, and Serafima’s, and even Gabriel’s, in a more roundabout way.)

(And Cassian is a lifelong soldier in a war that, at the moment, seems unlikely to ever go his way or even end, and there are very few instances in his future that will allow him any semblance of being okay.)

But he’ll keep going. He’ll return to the Academy, and he’ll continue to recruit for the Rebellion, and pass on intelligence to Asori. He won’t stop fighting. Not now. Not ever.

He simply cannot stop.

Not if he wants to survive.

And Cassian has always been nothing if not a survivor.

* * *

Cassian spends the last few days of break wandering aimlessly through the Underworld, and speaking to absolutely no one. He’s still exhausted, almost perpetually so, and desperate for comfort and familiarity. This is why, of course, he spends all his time on the streets of the Underworld. He’s been on Coruscant for three years now, and knows the Underworld incredibly well, almost as well as he grew to learn Fulcra, as a six-year-old messenger for the Fest Rebellion.

The Coruscant Underworld is nothing like Fulcra, but it elicits similar, warm emotions in Cassian, and he’s grateful for them.

But it’s still a warzone, and Cassian is reminded of this when he steps out on Level 3765.

He’s only just exited the elevator that brought him down, has only walked about ten yards, before a bomb goes off in the building ahead of him, sending glass windows cascading onto the street and people below. Cassian watches as people begin to flee, screaming and shouting, shoving past him in their haste. He remains still, coughing a little, as he tries to read the sign on the front of the building, to ascertain what its function was and why it was targeted for a hit.

He walks a few feet to get a closer look, but abruptly stops when he sees the stormtroopers pouring out from the collapsed building.

They are met by blaster fire, and Cassian turns, as a small group of people and aliens emerge from the shadows, from the side alleys, to take on the stormtroopers.

They have their faces covered, and he can’t recognize any of them, but it’s enough that they’re shooting at stormtroopers.

He joins them. This is what he does.

The stormtroopers are quickly overwhelmed, and Cassian’s attention catches on the lone figure that steps away from the other fighters, to walk towards the stormtroopers, firing a blaster as they go.

She’s a woman, and dressed head-to-toe in gray, from gray trousers, to gray shirt, to gray jacket, though her boots and the scarf wrapped around her head and shoulders are black. She’s pointing a heavy blaster pistol at the stormtroopers, firing with precise aim and taking them down, and carries a rifle on her back.

He watches, impressed, as she continues until the last stormtrooper falls. The woman turns, and Cassian sees her face for the first time just as she spots him.

He can only stare at her.

Her skin is a rich black, her nose wide, and her lips full and parted, as she stares at him in similar amazement.

Because they’ve seen each other before.

Her eyes are a brilliant light blue, and framed by a darker blue paint.

“Cassian,” she says, her Mantooine accent warping his name slightly, audible over the crackling fire of the bombed building.

He could never quite forget what her eyes look like.

“Taraja,” he says, and he cannot believe it.

He hasn’t seen her in person since they first met, six years ago. He hasn’t seen her image in hologram, or heard her voice, for four years, since he left Fest. It’s been too dangerous, too uncertain, for him to try to reach her on Mantooine from Coruscant, and so Cassian has been carefully forcing himself to put her away, out of his mind, acknowledging that in all likelihood she was already dead, had died years ago.

Not only is Taraja Ya’qul not dead, but she’s standing in front of him.

Older--he thinks she must be nineteen now--but very much alive.

She starts to laugh.

In the next second, she’s holstered her pistol and thrown her arms around his neck.

She looks like sunlight feels, and for someone like Cassian, who has spent his entire life starved of sunlight whether on the gray planet of Fest or deep in the dark abysses of Coruscant, it is almost too much.

He returns the hug.

He finds himself smiling, for the first time in so, so long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The blue parka that belonged to Wada, that Geeta gives to Cassian, is the one he wears on Jedha in ROGUE ONE. Or at least it is in this story.
> 
> If you don't remember who Taraja is, she's the Mantooine rebel introduced in Chapter 12: The Girl, and appears in hologram messages in the chapters after that, when Cassian is still on Fest.


	25. The Captain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taraja is alive, and on Coruscant, and Cassian cannot believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter begins immediately after the end of the last chapter.

Taraja is alive, and on Coruscant, and Cassian cannot believe it.

They only have two days to catch-up, since Cassian has to return to the Academy, but they make the most of it. They don’t linger in the street in front of the building Taraja and her team have bombed, aware that more stormtroopers and Coruscant Underworld police are likely to come screaming around the corner at any minute. Instead, Cassian leads the group back to an elevator, to take them to the Coruscant Rebellion base on Level 4876. On the way, Taraja introduces him to her team.

“This is Sauda, Mosi, and Sefu,” she says, pointing to the three other humans of the group. Sauda looks to be in her mid-thirties, unusually short and frowning quizzically at Cassian, eyeing him with narrowed brown eyes. Mosi and Sefu appear to be twins, early twenties, with identical golden-brown skin and dark hair arranged in tight braids, hanging down to their chins. “And this is Tully, and Kolya.”

Tully is a Barabel, over seven feet tall, with tough, scaly gray skin and long gray claws. She smiles at Cassian, revealing teeth that are each five centimeters long. Kolya is a Bothan, only about four and a half feet tall, with bright green eyes, pointed ears, and brown fur that ripples as he studies Cassian.

“Hello,” says Cassian, nodding at them all.

“This is Cassian Andor,” says Taraja, and Cassian smiles when she says his full name. He doesn’t hear it very often, and it’s been years since he heard it from Taraja. “He’s from Fest.”

This means something to the group. More than one pair of eyes widen, while Tully laughs a roar. Mosi and Sefu exchange a glance, while Sauda nods, like she finally understands something.

“You were in the Fest Rebellion?” Sauda asks, her accent the same as Taraja’s.

“Yes,” says Cassian. “I went to Mantooine once, and that was where I met Taraja.”

“Yeah, I remember you,” says Sauda.

Cassian frowns at her, before it finally clicks. “Oh. You… You were on the comlink, that day. With the manifest, for the Horuz System.”

“That was me, yeah.”

Cassian doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s saved from answering by the elevator beeping, announcing that they’ve reached Level 4876.

The Coruscant Rebellion still does not have a central leader, not like what the Fest Rebellion had with Travia and Sids. The closest thing to Travia and Sids here is Asori, but Cassian knows she’s at the Academy today, so what he does is take the group to talk to the handful of rebels running the repurposed hotel, to find them a place to stay and rest, and hopefully from there they can get a new mission, and talk to Asori later.

While the rest of her team leaves to find some food, Taraja lingers by Cassian’s side.

He still can’t quite believe she’s really here.

He has so many questions.

He sees them all mirrored in Taraja’s eyes.

Taraja follows him upstairs to his apartment. She leans her rifle against the wall by the door but keeps her pistol in the holster at her waist as she looks around the front room, taking in the bare walls, Cassian’s bag of clothes from the Academy, and the camp bed, still open in a corner. Cassian watches as she approaches the windows, peering out at the streets below. A light rain has started to fall, which in the Coruscant Underworld basically means water is dripping down from the surface, staining everything gray with grime and muck.

“Are you hungry, or thirsty, or anything?” He asks, trying to be a good host.

“I could go for a strong drink,” Taraja says. Cassian can relate.

He finds a bottle of Rodian spice liquor in one of the cabinets in the kitchen, unsurprised, as Wada was the last to live here and tended to favor liquor from his homeworld. He pours them both a drink and returns to the front room, where Taraja has settled herself onto the couch.

She smiles when he hands her the glass, and she takes a sip. “Rodian spice liquor? Are you trying to impress me?”

Cassian feels his face reddening, and he looks away.

Taraja laughs, and in a gentle tone, says, “You have a Rodian friend, right?”

Cassian had mentioned Wada to Taraja a handful of times, but is still surprised that she remembers. “I did. He died about six months ago.”

“Oh, kriff,” Taraja says, and she looks stricken. She reaches out, and takes Cassian’s hand, squeezing it. “I’m sorry, Cass.”

“Thanks,” Cassian says.

“Been a rough six months, huh?”

“More like a rough life,” Cassian says, taking an overly enthusiastic gulp of liquor.

Taraja nods, and it’s her turn to look away. “Yeah. I get that.”

Cassian looks at her, takes in how exhausted she looks, how ashen her face is, how her blue eyes are wide and aching. It’s all so familiar to him, because _he_ looks like that, too. He and Taraja don’t actually look anything alike, not physically, but with their matching bone-weary demeanors and sad gazes, they could be each other’s reflection.

He is so grateful for her.

She’s come just in time.

“Tell me,” he says, and by that he means, _Tell me everything. Tell me about the last four years, and everything in the years before that you did not say_.

She turns to him, and he sees that she’s understood him completely, like she always has.

She tells him about her parents, who she’s mentioned to him in passing before. He remembers their names as Aisha and Siwatu, remembers a story or two she told him of them, even vaguely remembers their voices from when they’d call for her while she talked to Cassian in her room on Mantooine.

Now she tells him that they died, two years ago. She was seventeen.

“They weren’t even killed by the Empire,” she says. “My father was driving their speeder through Mazl, and it malfunctioned. It was old, and the wiring was fraying, and it caught fire. He lost control, and it smashed into a restaurant. They died instantly. Or so I was told.”

“I’m so sorry, Taraja,” says Cassian, who understands the shock she must’ve felt upon finding out, having experienced something quite similar, and very recently.

“I stayed on Mantooine for a while after that,” she says. “But it… I missed them. And I was constantly reminded of how much I missed them. And I decided that I couldn’t stay any longer. My friends, the ones you just met, they had decided to leave Mantooine. They were going to look for other Rebellions, to help them, to get closer to the Empire, like you wanted to.”

Cassian nods. “Where did you go?”

“A few places,” says Taraja. “Mandalore, for a couple weeks. Lothal. Corellia, for a few months. Alderaan, most recently, we just came from there. They have an incredibly strong Resistance group. Have you ever heard of Bail Organa?”

“Organa?”

“He’s an Imperial senator from Alderaan,” Taraja says. “He’s married to the Queen of Alderaan, Queen Breha. They have a _lot_ of money, and they’re basically funding the Alderaanian Resistance, all on their own.”

Cassian stared at her. “But he’s a _senator_.”

“Yeah, but he’s always been really outspoken against the Empire, and the Emperor, even before he was the Emperor. But Organa is really good, really smart, and the Empire hasn’t caught him or the Queen actually committing treason. It’s basically an open secret among the rebels, though.”

Cassian takes the information in, feeling a little stunned. There is not yet open rebellion, not quite, but hearing that an Imperial senator is known, more or less, as a supporter of his planet’s Resistance is comforting. It gives Cassian that strange, distant feeling of hope, a feeling he’s frequently associated with Taraja.

Taraja tells him that she and her team have come to Coruscant for Organa, to look into the Rebellion on the capital planet. Organa had heard plenty of rumors of it over the years, but had never managed to track down any members, not without exposing himself.

“I see why he hasn’t found you,” Taraja says. “You’re all underground.”

As the sun sets through the windows behind them, Cassian fills her in on the Coruscant Rebellion. He tells her about the rebels he knows, the alive ones, and the dead ones. He tells her about the anarchy they’ve participated in, the dirty gunfights and the frequent bombings. He tells her about the crimes he’s orchestrated, and then he tells her about Asori, and her defection, and Cassian’s current undercover mission in the Academy, now headed into its third year.

She gawks at him, her blue eyes huge.

“You’ve been doing this for _three years?_ ”

“I’m about to start my third year at the Academy,” Cassian says.

“Cass,” she says, and he can hear the amazement in her voice, and it makes him smile, and he hasn’t felt proud of himself like this in longer than he cares to remember. “That’s _amazing_. Stars and galaxies, I can’t… _Wow_.”

Cassian shakes his head. “It’s been… A lot.”

“Yeah, I believe you.” She stares at him for a moment, enough to make Cassian nervous, before abruptly getting to her feet.

She looks down at him, and smiles. “Come on. I may not technically be a member of any one Liberators group anymore, but I can still try and thank you for what you’re doing for the galaxy. Let me buy you dinner.”

Cassian laughs a little, but nods, getting to his feet. When they first met, six years ago, Taraja was taller than him. Now, all these years later, they’re the exact same height. He thinks that they’re really equals now, that now they can really fight on the same team, in the same exact Rebellion.

“I’d like that,” he says.

“Great,” Taraja says. “But you’re gonna have to pick the place. I don’t know anything about the food on Coruscant, or in the Underworld.”

It’s late, and so they go to an all-night Wookiee restaurant Cassian had patronized with Wada a handful of times, on Level 4073. Cassian and Taraja have fun picking out the most ridiculous sounding and looking foods, daring each other to try them. Most Wookiee foods are too spicy for humans to eat without seriously damaging their tongues and throats, but this restaurant is specifically geared towards humans, and Cassian is from Fest, where food is regularly too spicy for most outsiders. Taraja tells him that Mantooian food is also quite spicy, though she thinks Festian food might beat it, and announces that she is not afraid to try anything.

She smiles as Cassian carefully eats barbecued trakkrrn ribs, and he laughs loudly at the look of alarm on her face when she knocks back a shot of Thikkiian brandy.

They don’t continue their conversation from the apartment, but rather, talk only of themselves, of their favorite things, their lost family, what they liked to do on their left behind homeworlds.

It is the most fun and intimate conversation Cassian has had with anyone in a while, maybe years.

When Taraja kisses him at the end of the night, she tastes of forest-honey cake, and Cassian thinks that perhaps he’ll survive his final year at the Academy after all.

* * *

Cassian is eighteen years old when Asori gives him a new assignment.

She calls him into her office at the Royal Imperial Academy, not unusual, and he closes the door as soon as he’s inside, also not unusual. What is unusual is how drained she looks, he thinks. Her hair is somewhat unkempt, which is very unlike her, and she’s smoking a cigarette, something Cassian has only see her do once or twice, and only when she’s been under great stress.

“What is it?” He asks.

She eyes him. “So much for ‘hello’, huh?”

“Sorry,” Cassian says. “Hello, Asori. What’s wrong?”

“You are far too put-together for a third-year cadet,” she grumbles, and Cassian is quite confident this is not what is wrong.

Still, he looks down at his uniform, at his pressed black shirt and shined boots. “I kind of have to be, Asori. The Academy demands it, and my professors will notice otherwise.”

“Mm. How are your classes?”

He shrugs. “Fine. About the same.”

This is the first year Cassian has not had a class with Gallamby, and he knows this difference is only helping his mental health. He’s seen Gallamby in passing around campus, but has been able to decline Gallamby’s requests for a drink in his office with the excuse of needing to study for his classes. He’s a third-year cadet; he doesn’t need to fake being busy.

“Well, you’re still a shining star,” Asori says, and only now does Cassian realize that the scandocs on her desk are all about him, with the assessments he’s been given by professors and officers. He sees his own impassive face staring back at him. His concern grows.

“Asori, what’s the matter?”

“Do you want a cigarette?”

“I want you to tell me why you’ve called me in here,” says Cassian.

She sighs. “It’s not that terrible. I just… I have to ask you to do something, and I dislike asking more of you than I already have.”

Cassian stares at her.

He finds himself oddly touched.

He knows Asori feels guilty, for enrolling him at the Academy, for all the trauma, constant stress, and terror Cassian has experienced because of it. He did finally confess to her what had happened at the prison; it was the first time she’d ever hugged him, and from the way her hands shook, he knew his retelling of the experience had cut her deeply. He no longer held it against her; he knew she’d never wanted anything like that to happen to him.

(That doesn’t mean Cassian has accepted, or forgiven himself, for what happened at the prison. He never will. He’ll just learn to forget it, to walk away, to tell himself he did it in service of the Rebellion, and hope that that’s enough.)

(It isn’t. It never is.)

“Asori,” Cassian says. He sits in the chair on the opposite side of her gray Quadanium steel desk, meeting her hazel eyes, the gray smoke from her cigarette swirling in the air. “That’s what I’m here for. To work, to… To do things that are difficult, and dangerous. You know that.”

She sighs, exhaling a cloud. “I know. But I… I think I forgot, at some point.” She glances at him. “You are very young, Cassian, and I forget that, sometimes. I treat you like an equal, and we are not equals.”

Cassian looks down at his hands, clasped on his lap, and nods. Asori never calls him by his real name, not at the Academy, and this distinction only highlights how strange her mood is.

“I don’t say that to be rude, or inconsiderate,” Asori adds, looking past his head, staring at the plain wall. “I mean only that there is a great difference between being eighteen and being forty-five.”

“I imagine there is,” says Cassian.

(He won’t live to know it.)

“But even you, eighteen years old…” She trails off, shaking her head. “You’ve already experienced so much loss, and horror. I’m responsible for some of that.”

“Not really,” says Cassian. “I’d be fighting in this war if I was at the Academy, or not--”

“I know,” she says, cutting him off. “But I…” She sighs, shaking her head again, and putting her cigarette down in the metal ashtray on her desk. “No matter. I called you in here for a mission, not to plead forgiveness.”

She gets to her feet and goes to her coat closet, opening the doors and rifling through it. She pulls something out and turns, and Cassian actually laughs.

It’s a steel gray Imperial officer’s uniform.

“You’re a little early,” he says. “I don’t graduate for another seven months.”

Asori rolls her eyes. “It isn’t for that. This is for a week from now.”

The Academy will be closed a week from now, Cassian knows, for a short break for the staff and cadets. He’d been planning on returning to the Coruscant Underworld, to see Taraja.

He realizes now that the break he’d been looking forward to likely won’t happen.

“What’s happening a week from now?” He asks.

“A meeting,” she says. “Not at the Academy. With the Imperial Department of Military Research. On Empress Teta.”

Empress Teta is a Deep Core planet fairly close to Coruscant. It is highly urbanized, enough to rival Coruscant, and its capital city of Cinnagar covers most of the otherwise terrestrial planet. The planet has copious reserves of carbonite, and its economy relies heavily on mining. This makes for a wealthy and fashionable upper class who control the mines, giving rise to beautiful museums, exquisite restaurants, and general luxury that appeals to the tourists who flock to the planet.

“Okay,” says Cassian, considering all of this.

“I want you to go with me,” says Asori. “No one from the Academy will be at this meeting, save for me. It’s to discuss recent developments in the Imperial military, and I’m there to represent the Academy, and to observe and take notes on what the Academy may want to implement in future lessons.”

“And you want me there to…”

“An extra set of eyes and ears,” says Asori. “I’ll be listening and working on the Rebellion’s behalf, of course, but I might miss something. You’re the only rebel I know of who has an intimate understanding of how Imperial soldiers and officers operate, which is why you’re my choice for this. My only choice, really.”

Cassian eyes the gray officer’s uniform. “Being a cadet wouldn’t get me into the meeting, I take it.”

“Not at all. I’ll have to introduce you with another name, too.”

“Okay,” Cassian says. He stands up, and goes to Asori. Carefully, he takes the uniform out of her hands, folding it neatly over his arm. He looks her in the eye, and nods.

“Okay.”

She swallows, hard, but nods back.

“You’re a good man, Cassian.”

* * *

Cassian only has time to leave a message with Ethan, to tell Taraja that he won’t be coming back to the Underworld for his break.

Ethan rolls his eyes, but agrees to tell her.

“She’ll probably just be jealous you get to go to Empress Teta,” Ethan says, and Cassian has to agree. He knows he’s in for a potentially dangerous mission, that if he’s caught as an imposter he’ll be killed, or worse, but he can’t help but be excited to see this new planet.

The planet lives up to his expectations. Cinnagar, the capital city, looks very much like Imperial City on Coruscant, but is somehow cleaner, and shinier. The buildings sparkle in the light of the planet’s sun, which looks brighter than Coruscant’s. The air is even cleaner, and Cassian breathes deeply as he and Asori disembark their transport, his breaths obvious enough that Asori chuckles.

“Get that Coruscant smog out of your lungs while you can,” she says.

“I’ll try.”

Cassian can’t help but fiddle with the collar of the steel gray Imperial officer’s uniform as they take another transport through Cinnagar. He ended up staring at himself in a mirror once he put it on during the flight from Coruscant to Empress Teta, almost unable to recognize himself. Cassian has worn dark gray clothes before, such as on Fest, but in the past few years he’s favored black, with his cadet uniform at the Academy and black so as to blend in with the surroundings of the Underworld. He’s also never worn clothes as nice or expensive as the uniform. Asori had found him one that fits him exceptionally well, enough so that it almost looks natural on him.

He doesn’t like it.

(This is the first time Cassian will wear a gray Imperial officer’s uniform. It is not the last time.)

The rank on the uniform denotes Cassian to be a Captain. Asori has informed him that his name is Captain Eli Willix, and that he’s a recent hire at the Academy. She tells him that no one at this meeting will bother checking this information, that her word is enough, and Cassian can only hope this is true.

The meeting is taking place in the Core District of Cinnagar, in an Imperial building. Cassian follows Asori inside, lingers at her side as she occasionally shakes hands with an officer or two, all of whom call her Commander Joshi and beam at the sight of her, their eyes merely passing over Cassian. Cassian is reminded that Asori is a well-respected figurehead at the Academy, and well-known among the higher ranking Imperial officers. She is admired, and looked at with high esteem by Imperial leaders, and the Rebellion is very lucky to have her.

Just like Asori forgot how young Cassian is, he realizes he forgot how brave she is.

He resolves to treat her with more respect after this.

Their mission falls into jeopardy as they head towards an elevator to go to the meeting.

From behind Cassian, a voice calls, “Andor!”

And Cassian, caught up in thinking of Asori, and this strange new planet, and so uncomfortable in the gray officer’s uniform, impulsively turns.

He hears Asori’s sharp intake of breath, and realizes his mistake.

It’s too late to rectify it.

A man in a gray uniform matching Cassian and Asori comes jogging towards them. His skin is pale, and he has small blue eyes, and a wide smile. He looks absolutely delighted to see Cassian, who is quietly panicking.

He reaches for Cassian’s hand, and Cassian accepts the man’s handshake, all the while readying himself to grab his pistol and begin firing.

“What a surprise this is, Captain Andor,” the man says. He looks at Asori. “Asori, I had no idea you also knew the Captain.”

Cassian blinks.

He realizes what’s happening, and why he isn’t dead yet.

The man thinks he’s Zeferino.

Zeferino is a Captain for the Empire, somewhere, and sometime in the past few years, Cassian has grown to look enough like his brother to pass as him.

Cassian is eighteen years old. Zeferino, wherever he is, is twenty-two.

Asori, who may or may not understand what’s happening, nonetheless plays along. “Yes, Vict. I met… Captain Andor, at the Academy. We didn’t know we’d be running into Commander Damarcus on Empress Teta, however.”

Her words are slow, and awkward, but she’s given Cassian the man’s name and rank, and that’s really what he needs.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Captain,” Damarcus continues, oblivious to Asori’s confusion and Cassian’s tight stress. “When was the last time we saw each other? Lothal?”

“I think so, sir,” says Cassian, who has no idea.

“Well, I’ll be Kesseled,” Damarcus says. “We’ll have to talk later. I take it you’re attending this meeting?”

“Yes,” says Asori, cutting in. “I thought it would be beneficial to have... Captain Andor, to listen and confer on behalf of the Academy with.”

“Of course,” says Damarcus. “Makes sense. Well, lead on, Asori.”

Asori nods, shoots Cassian one inscrutable look, and leads them into a waiting elevator. As Damarcus begins a long rant on the bumpy transport ride he took to Empress Teta, Cassian closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath.

* * *

Against all odds, Cassian makes it through the meeting without being found out as an imposter.

Asori realizes who Damarcus thinks Cassian is when the man introduces Cassian to the room at large as Captain Zeferino Andor.

She’s flawlessly smooth and authoritative from then on, and everyone accepts the explanation for why Zeferino Andor is at this meeting, rather than Eli Willix.

Damarcus and Asori seem to be the only ones who’ve ever met Zeferino, and so no one comments on how Zeferino looks a little different than they remember.

Because Cassian is certain he doesn’t look _that_ much like Zeferino. He understands why Damarcus would’ve thought him to be Zeferino from the back, as Cassian remembers Serafima commenting on how her boys were twins to her when she’d see them working on schoolwork in front of the fire in her house.

But Cassian has Serafima’s eyes, and Zeferino has Gabriel’s eyes.

Zeferino is the walking incarnation of their father, appearance-wise, while Cassian has always been a mix of his mother and father.

Unless, he isn’t anymore. Maybe he’s losing that sparkle that Serafima had, the light in her eyes that made her so endearing and adored, even when she was imposing. Maybe he’s becoming the roughest parts of his mother, the smuggler and thief she was when she was a teenager. Cassian has always had his father’s fierce tenacity, his stubbornness, his drive to destroy in the name of justice.

Maybe Cassian is simply the worst parts of both his parents.

After the meeting, Asori treats Cassian to dinner at a famed Alderaanian steakhouse, The Starblossom.

“That went… shockingly well,” she says. She’s been downing glass after glass of Alderaanian brandy basically since the moment they sat down, and her warm russet-colored skin is tinged rosy pink.

“Yeah,” Cassian says.

Asori looks at him, and she’s apologetic. “I thought your brother’s name would help you, one day, but I didn’t… I’m surprised.”

Cassian looks away, at his officer’s cap, where he’s set it down on the table next to his glass of Chimbak wine. “Me too.”

“You don’t look that much alike, if it helps,” she says.

“We look enough alike for that Commander to think I’m Zeferino.”

Cassian takes a drink of wine, just in time for Asori to scoff, “Yeah, well, I told you; he’s probably one of those morons who think all Festians look the same. He probably thinks you and I look a lot alike, what with the brown skin.”

He barely manages to keep from spitting the wine over the table, he starts to laugh so hard. It’s ridiculous, and not that funny, and might actually be true, but Cassian is exhausted from the stress of the day, and a little light-headed.

And Asori is trying, and none of this is her fault, and he’s going to be kinder to her.

She smiles at his laughter, and for the moment, at least, they understand each other perfectly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Willix" is a canon alias for Cassian Andor, but there is no information on when/where/why/how he used it, as it is with Joreth Sward. Willix will come back later in this story.
> 
> Empress Teta was an EU planet (that MIGHT still be canon? Not sure) and had a pretty interesting explanation for its name that is not mentioned in this story. Descriptions from Wookieepedia.
> 
> Wookiee and Alderaanian food descriptions also via Wookieepedia.
> 
> I'm about 150k into this story in real life, and one chapter away from starting the ROGUE ONE scenes. I will likely finish the whole thing around the end of the month, so that's the time frame, if you were wondering.


	26. Chrysalis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is eighteen years old when he, or rather Joreth Sward, graduates from the Royal Imperial Academy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the folks who commented! It really brightens my day to read your thoughts on the story.

Cassian is eighteen years old when he, or rather Joreth Sward, graduates from the Royal Imperial Academy.

He ends up ranking second in his class, just behind a cadet from Coruscant that Cassian only knows as Goreth, who comes from a long line of military officers and politicians. Asori, with anger in her eyes and a tightness in her tone, tells Cassian that it’s very likely that Cassian should’ve finished first in his class over the Coruscant cadet, but that the boy’s family demanded his first ranking.

“His family is very rich, and I’m sure Commandant Deenlark didn’t want to upset them,” Asori says, almost spitting in her anger. Cassian thinks it’s sweet that she’s so upset by this affront to Cassian; he isn’t bothered at all, has never cared about his ranking at the Academy, so long as he kept his professors happy, as happy professors tend to tell Cassian more useful Intelligence than disgruntled ones.

Still, graduating as second in his class means Cassian is rewarded with a one-on-one dinner with Commandant Deenlark, the Academy President.

Cassian has only seen Deenlark in passing around campus, or on a handful of occasions when he’s addressed the cadets at large with a beginning of term speech or two. Deenlark is very tall, almost a foot taller than Cassian, with pale skin and dark eyes. His handshake is firm, and he smiles widely when he greets Cassian, revealing brilliantly white teeth.

“I’ve heard so much about you, Cadet Sward,” he says, gesturing for Cassian to sit. They’re eating at Deenlark’s home, an opulent mansion in one of the wealthier districts on the surface of Coruscant. Cassian had carefully washed his newest uniform for the occasion, but still feels terribly underdressed and unwelcome, even as Deenlark looks so pleased to see him.

“Only good things, I hope,” says Cassian.

Deenlark laughs, a laugh that is not so much a laugh as it is a cackle. “Indeed, very much so! Captain Gallamby, Commander Joshi, and Professor Kendet in particular speak very highly of you. Not an easy crowd to please.”

“Yes sir,” says Cassian, for lack of anything else to say.

“Have you enjoyed your time at the Academy, Cadet Sward? Found your education to be satisfactory?”

“Much more than satisfactory, sir,” says Cassian, and this is, by and large, the truth. He didn’t really know what he was in for when Asori approached him with her crazy undercover idea, three years ago, and he knows now that he would’ve had no way to prepare even if he’d known.

No matter how difficult it’s been, or traumatic, or dangerous, Cassian can’t deny that he has received an incredible education at the Academy, and has learned a wealth of valuable information and intelligence for the Rebellion.

He suddenly imagines the looks on his parents’ faces if they’d ever gotten to know he’d attended the Academy. He pictures his father’s horrified face, and his mother’s pleased smile, and he wants to laugh.

Some of his amusement must appear on his face, for Deenlark beams, pouring them both generous glasses of Whyren’s Reserve, a Corellian whiskey so expensive that Cassian has only ever seen bottles of it behind glass windows in bars, and never tried it himself.

“I can’t wait to hear your stories,” Deenlark says. “But first, a toast; to your brilliant future, Joreth Sward. Intelligence, correct?”

Cassian smiles and nods, raising his own glass. “Yes sir.”

The assignment hadn’t surprised him when he’d received it, a week previously. Gallamby had been certain of it, and Asori had said it seemed likely. She and Cassian had still had a good laugh over it, since technically, Cassian has been working in Intelligence for a very long time now.

Just not Imperial Intelligence.

Deenlark smiles. “And to the Empire, long may she thrive.”

That one is a little harder to swallow, but Cassian dutifully repeats the words, reminded that though he’s graduating from the Academy, his undercover work is not done, may never truly be done.

Deenlark clinks his glass against Cassian’s, and they drink.

* * *

The cadets have a month in between graduation and the beginning of their military careers. Some of the cadets venture back to their homeworlds, for a final farewell to their families, more or less. If the Academy has worked as it was designed to, then these cadets, now Imperial officers, will feel very distant and detached from their homeworlds, and will be all too eager to return to Coruscant, and the Empire.

Other cadets visit rich and luxurious planets around the Core Region, including Empress Teta, for a month of frivolity and general nonsense.

Cassian had expected this route to be the one his roommate Daren chooses, but Daren surprises him, when he not only announces that he’s going back to Corellia to see his parents, but invites Cassian to go with him.

“I’ve told my parents a lot about you, and they’d like to meet you,” Daren says, as he and Cassian finish packing their things up in their shared room on campus. Cassian realizes that Daren very much anticipates Cassian declining his invitation, by leaving it to the last minute, but also gleans from Daren’s lowered eyes and shrugging shoulders that he actually really wants Cassian to visit Corellia with him.

And Cassian, because he’s been Daren’s roommate for three years and has grown to like him, in spite of his Imperial leanings and general irritating nature, agrees. He’s never been to Corellia before, and he’s curious.

“Are you going to bring back something for me?” Taraja asks, when Cassian tells her where he’s going. He’s come back to the Coruscant Rebellion headquarters in the Underworld for a few days, before he’s to go to Corellia, to leave most of his things in his apartment aside from the bag he’ll take with him off-planet. Taraja is sprawled on the bed, watching him pack for the trip.

Taraja and Cassian have been dating for over a year. Taraja has, more or less, moved into Cassian’s apartment, telling him she figured she could, since Cassian was living at the Academy and rarely made it back to spend any significant time in it. He really doesn’t mind, as he’s never not shared a room with anyone, whether it was Zeferino in their mother’s house, or Nerezza on the Fest Rebellion base, or Wada in multiple buildings around the Coruscant Underworld, or Daren at the Academy. He thinks he wouldn’t like having so much space to himself, to sit in silence with only his own thoughts for company for days on end.

But living with Taraja is, of course, something else entirely from all of those past situations.

He finds he really likes having her so close.

“You could come with us,” Cassian says, pausing from his packing to look at her. “It’s turned into this whole thing. Some of Daren’s friends are coming too, and Ethan, and Lexis. You know them, they like you.”

Both Ethan and Lexis are planning to continue their undercover work for the Rebellion, even as they transition to Imperial officers. Lexis has been assigned a post on a Star Destroyer in the Outer Rim, so her messages will likely be sporadic, but when Asori and Cassian sat her down to talk to her about it, she reaffirmed her commitment to the Rebellion, and added that her mother was thinking of moving to Coruscant to be closer to it all.

Ethan has been assigned a post in Advanced Weapons Research on Coruscant, and he and his family plan to continue their Rebellion work. His parents still run their shop in CoCo Town, and have continued to assist the Rebellion, ever since Cassian recruited them three years earlier. Ethan’s little brother, Sebastian, now nine years old, is slowly becoming more involved with the Rebellion, as he prepares to apply to the Royal Imperial Academy in seven years’ time.

Cassian hasn’t gotten to see the Bain family as much as he’d like to, but he did take time recently for a short visit, primarily to see Sebastian. He’d been surprised at how withdrawn and moody he’d been, not as exuberant nor cheerful as Cassian was used to him being, and Callista had pulled him aside after.

“I think it’s the stress of school, and then the Rebellion,” Callista had said. “And he’s upset he doesn’t get to see Ethan as much as he used to, and he’s upset that Ethan is going to work full-time now. You know how it is. He’ll get used to the change.”

Cassian doesn’t really know how it is; he’s never known anything different from working, and fighting in the war. But he looks at Sebastian’s tense frown and hopes she’s right.

Cassian had introduced Taraja to both Ethan and Lexis as soon as he could, though he’d warned her first that they both know him as Joreth Sward. Taraja has been remarkably suave about this distinction, effortlessly calling Cassian by the name whenever she speaks to either of them, and making sure to only ask them about Joreth when he’s not around. Cassian is pretty sure she doesn’t quite understand why he’s still keeping himself anonymous to either of them, and even now, he isn’t sure he understands it anymore.

He thinks he might tell Ethan and Lexis his real name soon, now that they’ve all graduated, and more than earned his trust.

He thinks of how the Imperial Commander Damarcus, on Empress Teta, thought he was Zeferino, and worries that Ethan or Lexis might run into Zeferino at work and make a similar mistake.

He does think they’re both talented enough to pass off the misnaming as a fluke, but isn’t convinced it’s something Zeferino would let go. He might go so far as to look up Joreth Sward, and then Cassian is confident his brother would recognize his face, even though they haven’t seen each other in five years.

Cassian has no idea what Zeferino would do after that, but remembering his brother’s cold gaze, his impassivity and disappointment, the coolness with which he shot Cassian in the shoulder on Fest, he thinks he’d be better off not knowing.

He thinks his brother would be much less forgiving of eighteen-year-old Cassian, who’s been working undercover in the Empire for three years, than he had been of thirteen-year-old Cassian, a child soldier on far away Fest.

Taraja is still considering his invite to Corellia, looking out the window of the apartment, deep in thought.

“It would probably be fine,” she says at last. “Might even be fun. But I just… I don’t think I’d be comfortable.”

And Cassian understands.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like your friend Ethan,” Taraja continues. “And Lexis is nice too. But your roommate Daren, and his friends… They’re Imps, Cass, and I could not forget that. I’d hold it against them. I just…” She sighs, shaking her head, and running her hand over her black hair, which she’s arranged into dozens of thin braids.

“Hey,” Cassian says softly, going over to her on the bed and kneeling on the floor in front of her. He reaches out and takes her hands, holding them in his. “It’s okay. I understand.”

“I’m not like _you_ , Cass,” Taraja says, and she sounds so sad about it. “I’m not… I’m not clever enough to fake it, to pretend I can talk to them, not while knowing they think I’m scum for fighting the Empire, knowing they would shoot me in a heartbeat if they ever found out. I’m not brave like you, I couldn’t--”

“Hey, hey,” Cassian says again, squeezing her hands. “Look at me.”

Taraja looks at him, her bright blue eyes meeting his dark brown ones.

“You’re brave, Tara,” Cassian says. “Don’t say you aren’t, because you are. You’re here, aren’t you? In the Rebellion? Fighting for this cause since you were a little girl?”

“Yeah.”

“How many others can say the same, hm?”

“You could,” she says.

“I couldn’t say I’ve been in this fight since I was a little girl.”

That makes her laugh, at least. He smiles as she puts her hands on his face, and kisses him.

“Bring me back something nice from Corellia,” she says.

"I will."

* * *

The days on Corellia are an hour longer than they are on Coruscant, which Cassian is pretty sure is the strangest thing about the planet.

Corellia is diverse in its climate and land. There are long plains and hills, but also dense cities and tall mountains. There are jungles and forests, and islands that dot the oceans that also litter the planet. Cassian still has not gotten to see an ocean, to walk on a beach, and wonders if this trip will be the time he gets to.

Three billion people live on Corellia, with a good chunk of them living in the capital city of Coronet, where Daren’s family lives. Coronet is a metropolis, located on the tip of one of Corellia’s three continents. The city is technologically advanced, and quite beautiful, but its real point of pride is its bustling Port, which brings in thousands of ships every day.

Cassian remembers being a child in Fulcra, and spending hours watching the ships from deep space come into the Port of Fulcra. It is nothing compared to the scale and traffic of the Port of Coronet.

Daren and Ethan laugh at him as he stares out the window of the Coruscant transport as it lands, so invested is Cassian in seeing the Corellian ships taking off.

“If you’re this interested in the _port_ , you’re in for a good two weeks,” Daren says.

Along with Daren, Ethan, and Cassian is Lexis, who has also never been to Corellia before and is almost as interested in exploring Coronet as Cassian is. Daren’s other two friends, Moraine and Boone, have both visited Corellia before, but Moraine is also quite interested in the planet, as her first post-Academy assignment is to work at a military outpost in Kor Vella, another city on Corellia.

Daren’s parents are flawlessly polite when Daren introduces his friends. But unlike Ethan’s parents, who all but adopted Cassian when they met him, Daren’s parents only shake his hand and nod their heads.

“Daren’s told us about you,” says Ali, Daren’s mother, to Cassian. She looks very much like her son, with the same dusty blonde hair and string of freckles across her cheeks. But her face is more pointed than Daren’s, and her eyes are colder.

Daren’s father, Gorden, is similar in frigidity. He does delight in meeting the recent Academy graduates, and peppers them with questions on their professors and instructors. But he places quite a bit of emphasis on class ranking, and Cassian assumes that this is the reason that he latches onto Cassian, to the point of almost ignoring his own son.

“Very impressive, second in your class,” Gorden says, smiling at Cassian. His teeth are very white, and very straight, and his military-short brown hair is shiny and orderly in a way Cassian has only seen on the most devoted of Imperial officers.

Cassian doesn’t like Daren’s parents at all, and is very glad Taraja decided not to come.

Gorden is currently stationed at a military outpost in Coronet, but takes care to not go into details, something the teenagers quickly pick up on and leave alone. Ali is an officer on a Star Destroyer that patrols the Corellian System, which is made up of five planets, Corellia included. She’s taken a week’s leave from her post in order to see Daren.

Cassian glances at Daren when she says this, and sees the small smile on his former roommate’s face, and understands that Daren is grateful that she’s taken the time off to see him.

Cassian suddenly realizes that Daren may not have always gotten to see his parents every time he went home to Corellia for break, and surprises himself by actually feeling _sorry_ for Daren.

Cassian’s parents are dead, and he can’t imagine how devastated he’d be if they acted like he was an inconvenience, a distraction from their work.

Once Daren’s parents have retired for the night, Cassian finds Daren, sitting on the porch behind the house, bare feet in the grass, looking out over Coronet spread below. He sits down next to him, handing him a glass of Corellian spiced ale.

“Thanks,” Daren says, voice soft. He takes a long drink, and Cassian looks away, listening to the sounds of their friends laughing in the house behind them.

“You have a nice house,” Cassian says, for lack of any other icebreaker.

Daren shrugs. “My parents do, yeah.”

“Have you ever wanted to live here, permanently? On Corellia?”

“Oh sure,” says Daren. “I grew up here, so.”

He says it like it should be reason enough, but Cassian grew up on Fest, and has no interest in settling there permanently, even if he could envision a future where such a thing was possible.

“The air is clear,” Cassian muses, glancing around. “And there’s a lot of green, and water. It’s warm, too. I can see why you’d want to stay.”

“Yeah,” Daren says, with a little laugh. He nudges Cassian’s shoulder with his own. “What about you, Joreth? Intelligence officers get the pick of the galaxy with where they want to go. Where do you want to end up?”

Cassian smirks, shrugging his shoulders.

“Somewhere warm,” he says.

“Yeah?”

Cassian nods. “Yeah. Somewhere warm, with an ocean. And a beach.”

He thinks it’d be nice, to feel the sun on his skin every day, to breathe clean air, to not have to live under constant cloud cover, to not have to deal with a frost that invades his lungs, ice that chokes his throat. Cassian would like to stand on warm sand and look out over a brilliant blue ocean, to not have to wake up everyday to a constant and permeating gray, as he does in the Underworld and did on Fest.

That, he thinks, would be nice.

* * *

Daren takes them to the Blue Sector, a district in Coronet with a reputation for being dangerous and crime-ridden. He takes care to warn them about this, to be on the lookout for criminal activity, and Cassian spots the look Lexis and Ethan exchange and fights to keep a smirk down.

He’s quite confident that the Blue Sector has nothing on the Coruscant Underworld.

And he’s right. Though it’s regarded as the dangerous part of the capital, the Blue Sector is full of tourists and off-worlders looking for a thrill. The district is dominated by casinos, and tattoo parlors, along with cantinas, brothels, and pawnshops. The most popular destination in the Blue Sector is Treasure Shop Row, a large, open-air shopping strip populated by dense crowds. Daren leads them into the throng with enthusiasm.

Cassian is glad to be in the Treasure Shop Row, though not to get a tattoo, no matter how much Daren and Ethan encourage him to. (He has no idea what he would possibly get, to start with, but also has no interest in making himself distinguishable; Cassian’s survival has always largely hinged on his ability to be an everyman, to blend in, to be unremarkable.) Cassian is glad to be in this part of the Blue Sector because it houses a cantina that Taraja has told him he can find members of the Corellian Resistance in.

Taraja and her Mantooine friends had spent a few months on Corellia, before going to Alderaan and then to Coruscant, and she still knows several rebels on the planet. She’s given Cassian the names of a couple, and Cassian has decided to make contact. He doesn’t know when, or if, he’ll ever come back to Corellia, but also is quite aware that he could use all the friends and contacts he can get.

Leaving his friends to taunt and pressure each other into tattoos, with the excuse that he’s going to look for a gift for his girlfriend (which isn’t even a lie, really, it's next on his list to do) Cassian makes his way to Fel Swoop.

The cantina is packed when he walks inside, and Cassian recognizes the majority of patrons to be members of swoop gangs, gathering that this is where the cantina’s name comes from. The gang members are recognizable by their uniformity, and the scowls and dark looks they send Cassian’s way, who is suddenly all too aware of his outsider status, even in his civilian clothes.

Still, he gathers his courage and approaches the bartender. The bartender is human, only a year or two older than Cassian, with fair skin, short light brown hair, and, of all things, has a cigarette tucked behind one ear.

He raises an eyebrow at Cassian.

“Whiskey, please,” says Cassian.

“I’d hope so,” the bartender grunts. “That’s all we serve here.”

Cassian can’t quite place his accent, but he knows it isn’t Corellian. He watches the bartender as he pours a shot out for Cassian, who accepts it with a nod.

“I’m looking for someone,” he says.

“Might not be the best place to do that,” the bartender says.

“Why?”

The bartender frowns at him. “Because not many people in here want to be found.”

Cassian nods, and considers the bartender. “I think you can help me.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because I’m looking for a man called Ruescott Melshi,” says Cassian, and the man freezes in his movements.

“Where’d you hear that name?”

“A mutual friend,” says Cassian. “A Mantooian woman, named Taraja. She was here about a year ago. Do you remember her, Melshi?”

Melshi smiles, and his eyes instantly lighten, as his stance relaxes. “Either Taraja was very descriptive, or you’re quite good.”

Cassian laughs. “She described your appearance, and your odd accent.”

“Odd accent? You’re one to talk. Taraja too. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

Cassian holds a hand out over the counter, and Melshi takes it. “Cassian Andor. I’m from the Coruscant Rebellion.”

“Son of a bantha,” Melshi gasps, now grinning widely. “We didn’t know for sure you lot existed.”

“Well, consider this your confirmation.”

“I’ll say. Kriff.” Melshi looks down at the counter for a moment, and then glances up, checking the chronometer on the wall. “I’m about due for my break. Let me buy you a drink, Cassian Andor, and we’ll have a little chat, yeah?”

Cassian smiles. “That’s what I’m here for. You’d better bring the whole bottle.”

He heads towards an empty table, Melshi’s loud laughter ringing in the air behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHRYSALIS, a noun, meaning: a preparatory or transitional state, or the hard outer case of an insect pupa, especially after being discarded. (Cassian is undergoing a transitional state from the Academy to Imperial Intelligence, while Daren is symbolized as the shell, discarded by his parents.)
> 
> Deenlark is a canon character! He was in a novel by Claudia Gray, described as "very tall." That's all I know about him. He might not even be Commandant at this point in time (8 BBY). In old EU canon, the cadets ranked highest in the class were treated to a ball at the end of their education, but I thought a one-on-one dinner with a Commandant was more fitting. (This story might best be described as "theputterer cherry-picks her way through the Old EU.")
> 
> You might remember Ruescott Melshi from ROGUE ONE. He leads the team that rescues Jyn from Wobani, and then is on the beach of Scarif. There is very little canon info about him, but in this story, he is with the Corellian Resistance, and this is where he meets Cassian.
> 
> Descriptions of Corellia, including the Fel Swoop and Blue District, via Wookieepedia. No idea how much of that is still canon.
> 
> PSA: In real life, I have just finished writing the last pre-ROGUE ONE chapter, and the Nonsense is 156k. I will be starting the ROGUE ONE chapters in about a week, once I'm done with finals/papers, and will be giving ROGUE ONE the movie one last watch before integrating my Nonsense in there. (The every-other-day posting schedule will continue until I am totally done.) If there is a specific scene or question you want answered, re: Cassian in ROGUE ONE, hit me up! I can't guarantee I will include it, but I'll consider it. I have a list, but idk, maybe you've thought of something I've missed.


	27. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is nineteen years old, and he’s in love.

Cassian is nineteen years old, and he’s in love.

He thinks falling in love at a time like this, while he’s an undercover rebel spy in the Empire, while he spends his days talking to and indulging wealthy Imperial officers who frequently discuss their abhorrence of rebel soldiers, might just be the stupidest thing he’s ever done. And this is certainly saying something, because an argument could easily be made that most of the things Cassian has done, while being very brave, are also incredibly stupid.

But he’s completely unable to prevent himself from falling in love, and this is where he finds himself, nineteen years old, watching Taraja carefully polishing her rifle on the floor in their apartment.

She works methodically, and swiftly, pulling the rifle apart and leaving the pieces scattered around her in a half-circle. He watches as she picks up the cannister of blaster polish, carefully unscrewing the lid and dipping her hand inside. Her blue eyes are narrowed in focus, and she’s bitten her lip as she does when she’s lost in thought, something Cassian is quite sure she isn’t aware she even does.

Quenk jazz music plays softly from the floor behind Taraja, from an antique music player she found at a flea market sale in the Underworld a few months earlier. It’s cold today, a frigid rain coming down hard from the planet’s surface to Level 4876 of the Coruscant Underworld, and both Cassian and Taraja are bundled up in an effort to keep warm in the apartment. Taraja is even wearing the gift Cassian brought back for her from Corellia, a long gray-purple scarf, the deep color accenting her smooth black skin.

She has the scarf wrapped tightly around her head and shoulders as she works, and she’s so beautiful, and Cassian can only smile as he looks at her.

Taraja notices. She frowns. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing,” Cassian says, looking down at the floor, pretending like he was headed to the kitchen to wash their dishes. He can feel her eyes on his back as he walks away.

He isn’t sure why he can’t tell her that he loves her. He doesn’t think he’d scare her away, as they’ve been dating and living together, more or less, for almost a year and a half now. He’s pretty sure he could tell her and she’d nod, maybe smile a little, possibly tell him the same thing, and then they’d never speak of it again. He thinks this would be okay.

Cassian constantly wishes that Wada was still around, or Nerezza, or even his mother, for so many reasons, including his desire to talk to them about relationships, or at least to tell them about Taraja.

He wants them to know how grateful he is that she’s here at all.

He and Taraja are both traumatized, hardened, and perpetually depressed young people, at just nineteen and twenty-one years of age, respectively. They’ve both been soldiers since they were children, have both lost their childlike innocence and curiosity in waves of fire, blood, and grief. They’ve both lost their homes, and their families, and said goodbye to the planets they grew up on. They’re both more comfortable building bombs and planning reconnaissance missions than they are making plans to go out to dinner or telling the other about their fears of the future.

He thinks they’ve both gotten so invested in each other, so close to each other, because they both know they have very little time, and they’re desperate for any sense of connection and intimacy amidst all the terror and sorrow.

Cassian has lost track of the amount of nights he’s been woken up to Taraja screaming, the nights he’s had to shake her back to consciousness, to dodge out of the way when she moves to attack him, still lost in whatever awful nightmare he’s just dragged her back from.

He’s lost track of the amount of nights where she’s woken him from a similar nightmare.

He’s lost track of the number of days when he’s come back to the apartment from his job in Imperial Intelligence to find Taraja crouched in a corner of their bedroom, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at nothing at all.

He always takes care to shed his gray Imperial officer’s uniform before approaching her, since the first and only time he touched her while still wearing it resulted in her punching him solidly across the jaw.

He doesn’t know all the stories of her past that led to her great fear of men in Imperial officer’s uniforms. He understands.

He hates them too, even as he pretends to be one of them.

Once he’s changed, he kneels on the floor in front of her, murmuring her name until she looks at him.

He sees the fear, and the sorrow, and the aching guilt and pain in her eyes, and knows she sees the same in him, everyday.

Maybe the only thing they can really do for the other is show that someone’s there, that someone understands them, that someone believes they’re good, still good, despite it all, despite knowing them so intimately.

Cassian considers all this, standing in the kitchen, and then he turns around and goes back to the front room, where Taraja is putting her rifle back together.

She looks up at him.

“Come here,” he says, going over towards her and holding out his hand.

Taraja takes his hand, and allows Cassian to pull her to her feet. She wipes her hands down the front of her shirt, eyeing him in confusion.

“What?” She asks.

Cassian steps carefully over the parts of her rifle still spread on the floor, pulling her with him. As soon as they’re a couple feet away from the rifle parts, Cassian puts her arm around his shoulders and his arm around her waist, and starts to guide her in one of the dances Serafima taught him on his tenth birthday, the day before she died.

Taraja laughs, catching up, but allows it, holding Cassian’s hand in hers more tightly, leaning into him as they dance to the antique music player.

They’re the same height, and so it’s easy for Cassian to turn his head, to press his cheek against the gray scarf from Corellia that she’s wrapped around her head. He breathes deeply, and realizes the scarf smells like smoke from the bombing she’d participated in the day before, and it is this, more than anything, that prompts what he says next.

“I love you.”

He’s pretty impressed at how he manages to keep his voice from shaking.

Taraja abruptly stops dancing. She pulls back, and stares at him, all big blue eyes and parted mouth.

“You don’t have to,” she says, which is definitely not one of the several reactions Cassian had anticipated.

“I know,” he says. “But I do.”

Cassian has not gotten to see a lot of people in healthy, long-term romantic relationships over the course of his life. He barely remembers his parents being happy together, as he was only four years old when Gabriel moved out and Serafima took the children with her to the outskirts of Fulcra. He mostly remembers how awkward his parents were around each other, how they’d occasionally glance at each other when the other wasn’t looking, with such profound sadness and disappointment.

But his parents were on opposite sides of this war, and maybe that makes all the difference.

Taraja has always made Cassian feel more than he’s used to feeling. He remembers being eleven years old and almost literally running into her in the pipe on Mantooine, how awed he was at learning about another Rebellion, how glad he was to have a new friend, how full of life she was. He remembers being twelve, and thirteen, and talking to her from Fest, seeing her hazy blue hologram image and feeling comfort, and camaraderie. And he remembers being seventeen, and seeing her for the first time again, through gunfire and ash, as she shot down stormtroopers with an aplomb and ease reminiscent of the way he kills, too, and how the sight of her, fearless and impressive, shocked his grief-stricken mind back to wakefulness.

Now they fight side-by-side. They set up intricate bombs together, they watch each other’s back, they borrow blasters and knives from each other, they spar together. They climb their way through the Coruscant Underworld together, racing each other up ladders and buildings, goading the other into going higher and faster.

“Too slow, Cass,” Taraja calls to him, swinging from a bar and using her momentum to toss herself through a narrow gap between tunnels.

Cassian can only stare at her, as she climbs above him, and laugh.

Taraja has always been someone who makes Cassian feel better, who makes him think that maybe there’s a light at the end of all of this, after all.

Of course he should fall in love with someone who gives him such hope.

He lacks it, entirely, as he is.

“I don’t understand,” she says, and her voice is so soft and unsure, and it makes him ache.

They’re still standing there, pressed together, staring at each other.

“You’re my family,” Cassian says. “Everyone else, they’re… They’re dead, or they’re gone.” Fleetingly, he thinks of Zeferino, who is, of course, dead to Cassian, more or less. “But you, you came back. And you’re still here. I didn’t think I’d ever get that.”

He thinks of Wada, who had never actually promised Cassian that he wouldn’t leave him, but who’d been so stable, and reliable, and Cassian had just never entertained the notion that Wada could die one day and leave Cassian all alone.

And then Taraja had been there. Back again.

“And I…” He pauses, and considers his words. He’s being more honest, and expressing more emotions than he’s strictly comfortable displaying. “I am thankful for you, Taraja. Thankful that I get to know you, and… and you’re brave, and brilliant, and of course I love you, I--”

She cuts him off, kissing him, letting go of his hand to wrap her fingers in his hair, which is still military-grade short in a way Cassian hates but can’t avoid at this point in his life.

She steps back after a moment, and smiles at him, tapping her fingers against the back of his head.

“How you continue to surprise me, Cassian Andor,” she says. “How glad I am to know you, how happy you make me.”

He can’t hide the grin that creeps across his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Taraja repeats.

She kisses him again, and though she doesn’t tell him she loves him too, he thinks he understands anyway.

They’ve always understood each other so well, so intimately, and that’s enough.

* * *

Cassian and Ethan meet up for drinks in the Coruscant Underworld, six months after they have graduated from the Academy, and just under six months since they started working as Imperial officers while also passing information on the Empire to the Rebellion.

They haven’t seen each other since the Corellia trip.

Ethan has been in touch with Lexis, who is settling well into her post on the Star Destroyer, patrolling the Outer Rim. She last made contact from a moon called Endor, with a message that the ship was stalling to send squads and convoys down to the forest moon, to stake out the planet and explore the wildlife and creatures that live on it.

“There are ewoks on Endor, aren’t there?” Cassian asks, as Ethan relays this information.

Ethan blinks at him. “What the hell is an ewok?”

There are ewoks on Fest, too, which is how Cassian knows of their existence, though they typically stay away from human settlements. Cassian only saw one or two, when the ewoks would make an infrequent trip into Fulcra to trade. He found them absolutely delightful, though Zeferino found them irritating and Nerezza seemed entirely nonplussed by them.

“Um, small,” says Cassian. “Furry. Bizarrely aggressive.”

Ethan looks skeptical. “I somehow doubt the Empire’s gonna want to deal with them, then.”

“Probably not,” Cassian agrees. “How is your family, Ethan?”

“They’re good,” Ethan says. “They ask about you a lot. Dad’s been around the rebel base lately, but he hasn’t seen you. I told him you’re too busy to just hang around and chat.”

“That’s true,” Cassian agrees, hating that it is.

“Sebastian misses you too.”

Cassian smiles, thinking of Ethan’s younger brother, who he hasn’t seen in months. “I miss him, too.”

“His birthday’s next week, if you wanna drop by. Ma’s making Sic-Six-layer cake. You could bring Taraja too, Ma really likes her.”

“That sounds nice,” Cassian says. “I’ll ask Taraja, and I’ll definitely see if I can leave work early to come over.”

“Astral, sounds good,” Ethan says. “I’ll let them know.”

“How’s work?”

Ethan sighs, running a hand through his curly brown hair, gray-blue eyes downcast. “It’s… It’s intense. The Academy was really tough, sure, but these officers I work with… The weapons they’re building, it’s just. Everyone is really… There for it, you know?”

And Cassian does. He nods, as Ethan continues.

“Some of them are okay… My supervisor, this guy called Morks, he’s nice for the most part. He really just wants to solve problems, even if they’re for the Empire. Which I _get_ but don’t get, you know? And there’s this other guy… Not in my division, he’s off working on some top-secret project… Anyway, his name’s Galen Erso, he’s a scientist. Real mysterious, but he talks to just about everyone. Checking in.”

“Sure,” Cassian says, filing away this information about Galen Erso.

(He’ll need it later.)

“It’s just… The way they talk about _people_ ,” Ethan says, shaking his head. “Rebels, I mean. Like we’re just… subhuman. There’s no empathy, and it’s just… So many of them can’t wait for us to _die_.” Ethan sighs and reaches for his bottle of Adumari beer, shaking his head again.

Cassian looks at the table, waiting.

Ethan finishes drinking and sighs again, looking at Cassian. “How do you do it, Joreth?”

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” says Cassian, which is both a non-answer and a perfectly acceptable explanation.

“I know that,” Ethan says. He pauses and adds, “Sort of, I mean. You’ve mentioned being a child soldier before.”

“On Fest, yes. I was six.”

“ _Six?_ ”

“Yes.”

“Kriff,” Ethan breathes. “I can’t even imagine. What was… Never mind, I--”

“It’s okay,” says Cassian. “Say what you want to say.”

Ethan frowns. “I just, uh… What was it like?”

“Being six years old and fighting in a war?” Cassian checks, laughing a little, but it isn’t funny. He shrugs his shoulders. “It was terrible, but I was too young to know anything else. I… My father had just died, and my sister went to work in the Insurrectionist Cell he founded, and one day I went with her. I carried messages for the Cell, and then I started fighting, and then I started recruiting. I haven’t stopped.”

Ethan nods, taking in Cassian’s words. “I feel like… Sometimes I feel like you know everything about me, and I don’t know _anything_ about you.”

Cassian laughs, as guilt bubbles up in him. “Well, that’s probably the truth.”

He looks at the table, sees his blurry reflection in the dark surface, and then looks back up, meeting Ethan’s eyes.

Ethan has never demanded the truth, never asked for it, and Cassian wants to share it with him now.

“My real name is Cassian Andor,” he says, and he sees Ethan’s eyes widen at the truth, at long last. “I’m nineteen years old. I was born in Fulcra, on Fest, in the Outer Rim. My father’s name was Gabriel, and he died in a bombing at a Republic protest on Carida when I was six; the Republic fell shortly after that. My mother was Serafima, and I was ten when she was shot by a stormtrooper outside the market; I was standing next to her, and I saw her die. I had a sister named Nerezza; she was six years older than me, a rebel, and the Empire killed her when I was thirteen. I have a brother named Zeferino. He’s four years older than me, and he’s still alive. He’s a Captain in Imperial Intelligence.”

Cassian had gotten to look up Zeferino, on his first day at work on Coruscant. He’d discovered that his brother was indeed a Captain, as Damarcus on Empress Teta had thought, and that he was currently working aboard a Star Destroyer that was traveling around the Core Worlds. Cassian had created an alert for his brother’s name, so he’d find out if his brother had been re-assigned as soon as it happened.

Ethan stares, taking in this short speech from Cassian. When he speaks, he latches on to the one detail Cassian had found the most innocuous.

“You’re _nineteen?_ I thought you were twenty!”

Cassian snorts, and shakes his head. “No. You have to be sixteen to start at the Academy, and I was only fifteen when Asori approached me about it. We decided I could pass as sixteen. My scandocs for Joreth say that I’m a year older than I am.”

“Huh,” Ethan says. He looks down at the table for a heartbeat, before looking back up, meeting Cassian’s eyes. “I’m sorry about your family. I… I remember Jeseej saying something about your childhood being tragic, and kind of implying they were dead, but…”

Cassian nods. “Yeah. It’s okay. They’ve all been gone for a while.”

“Your brother really works for Imperial Intelligence?”

That makes Cassian roll his eyes. “Yes, he does. We don’t look very much alike, but I guess we look alike enough to be… confusing.”

“So, steer clear of a Captain Andor, is what you’re saying.”

“I’d advise it. He isn’t kind to rebels.”

“Not even you?”

Cassian laughs, but it’s a bitter, cold laugh, and he doesn’t sound like himself. “Definitely not. He shot me when I was thirteen.”

“Your brother _shot you?_ ”

“Ssh,” Cassian hisses. The bar they’re in is fairly crowded, with people from varying walks of life, ranging from hardened criminals to middle-class Underworld dwellers, but there is still enough anonymity in the crowd to suggest a possibility of Imperial spies. Ethan’s raised voice will draw attention to two young men talking in a corner.

Ethan’s face flushes and he shrinks in his seat a little.

“Yes, he did,” says Cassian. “Just in the shoulder. This was back on Fest, the same day my sister died.”

“Did he kill her?”

“I don’t think so,” says Cassian. “I think she was dead before he got there, but…”

Even as he speaks, he feels a cold lump of uncertainty coil in his stomach. Because Nerezza hadn’t been killed due to a bomb, or falling debris, or a building collapsing on top of her. She’d been shot in the head, and had fallen just outside the hangar doors. She could only have been killed by an Imperial fighter on foot, whether it was one of the stormtroopers who rushed the base, or one of the Imperial officers that followed them…

Cassian suddenly realizes that it’s possible Zeferino did kill Nerezza.

_“I will not kill you, Cassi. Do you know why?”_

_Cassian looks at Zeferino. He shakes his head._

_Zeferino lifts his arms, shrugging his shoulders._

_“Because you’re my little brother, Cassi,” he says. “Because I love you. Because I think you have good, to do. Not for the Rebellion, but for yourself. I want you to do that.”_

Nerezza had also been Zeferino’s sibling, but Cassian remembers enough of his childhood and the cool way with which Zeferino and Nerezza regarded each other to know that they weren’t as close as either of them were to Cassian. He supposes this was because he was the baby of the family, the one to be protected at all costs.

“You okay?”

Cassian realizes that Ethan is watching him, and growing more concerned by the second. He clears his throat.

“Yes, sorry. What were you saying?”

“I don’t even know, man,” Ethan says. “Just… kriff. You’ve had a rough go of it, huh?”

Cassian laughs. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“We’re pretty lucky to have you, Joreth.”

“Cassian.”

“Cassian,” Ethan repeats. “Sorry. That’ll take some getting used to.”

“Imagine getting used to everyone calling you by a different name.”

Ethan snorts. “Yeah, okay, fair point. Cassian. Okay. Well. Next round’s on me, for your honesty, or your bravery, or whatever.”

That makes Cassian laugh, and he leans back in his chair as Ethan goes to the bar.

* * *

Cassian is nineteen years old, and it’s the last peaceful day of his adolescence, and perhaps, the last peaceful day of his life.

He and Taraja go to CoCo Town, for Sebastian’s eleventh birthday. They are greeted at the door of the apartment by Callista, who beams at the sight of Cassian, throwing her arms tightly around him.

“It is so good to see you, Joreth,” she says, and Cassian realizes that Ethan has not told his family what Cassian’s real name is. He wonders if it’s because he didn’t give Ethan explicit permission to do so, and Ethan’s playing it safe, or if Ethan simply thought it’d be easier for his parents and Sebastian to only think of Cassian as Joreth Sward. He’s surprised by how little he minds. He’s used to being Joreth, and still being well-liked by the Bain family.

“Ethan tells us you’re so busy at work,” Callista continues, ushering them inside. “And _hello_ , Taraja, how nice to see you again! My goodness look at your hair, it’s beautiful.”

Taraja has carefully blown out her black hair, and it flutters around her face like a softly hovering cloud. Her skin darkens at Callista’s compliment and Cassian smiles at her.

“Aren’t you two adorable,” Callista says. “Come in, come in. Here, let me take your coats.”

As they walk into the front room, Sebastian comes screaming around the corner. He grins when he spots Cassian and darts to his side, throwing his arms around Cassian’s middle.

Sebastian is taller now, and his head can almost reach Cassian’s elbows. He still looks very much like he did the first time Cassian met him four years previously, with the same gray-blue eyes and curly brown hair. His hair is longer than Ethan’s (and Cassian’s), reaching just past his chin, as he doesn’t have to wear it in a mandatorily short haircut.

“Happy birthday, Seb,” Cassian says, looking down to meet Sebastian’s eyes.

“Thanks, Joreth,” Sebastian says. He glances around Cassian and notices Taraja. Instantly, Sebastian’s face grows red and he looks at the floor. In a quieter voice, he offers, “Hi, Taraja.”

Taraja takes pity on him, and keeps her distance. “Hello, Sebastian. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” Sebastian says. He hovers for a moment, uncertain, before taking off into the kitchen.

Cassian laughs, and goes over to Taraja. “You know, that was why I was intimidated by you when I was eleven, too. You’re too pretty.”

“Shut up,” she mutters back, but she’s smiling.

In the kitchen, Damon shakes Cassian’s hand warmly, offering him a smile identical to Ethan’s. Ethan himself arrives, and rolls his eyes when he sees his mother admonishing Cassian and Taraja for how skinny they are.

“Do you eat enough? I can send some food home with you, we have leftovers from the other night. Or is it the stress? I know this great meditation practice, it’s supposed to be similar to what the _jedi_ would do, and it’s worked wonders--”

“You’re definitely gonna stress them out if you keep talking their ears off,” says Ethan, squeezing past his mother to hug Cassian. “Hey man, how’s it going?”

“Your mother isn’t bothering me.”

“You know, you are weirdly polite for someone who calls himself a rebel,” Ethan mutters. “Hi Taraja, how are you? Joreth still treating you alright?”

“He clearly isn’t cooking for me enough, but I’m going to keep him.”

“Great, thanks,” Cassian says, rolling his eyes as Ethan cackles. Taraja winks at him from where she stands next to Damon, who pours her a glass of Coruscant blush wine.

Callista brings out the Sic-Six-layer cake she’s made for the occasion. As the name suggests, it does have six layers, identified by their ranging colors. Each layer is a different flavor, she says, and all were requested by Sebastian.

“So that’s why there’s mint right next to lemon,” Ethan says, earning an elbow in his gut from Taraja.

The cake is quite good, so long as you eat the layers separately and not in one bite. All the adults do this, while Sebastian goes to town and tries to cram a bit of each layer in his mouth in every bite. Callista and Damon attempt to prevent this behavior but soon give up, with Callista reasoning that “Joreth and Taraja are basically family anyway.”

Cassian smiles at her words, while Taraja looks startled. He’s reminded that she has not known the Bain family as long as he has, and that she likely feels much the same as he did when he first met them, and was overwhelmed by their kindness and warmth.

After dessert, Cassian and Taraja give Sebastian his birthday present.

The first gift is a vibroblade.

Taraja kneels down next to Sebastian and carefully turns it over in his hands, instructing him on how to handle it properly. “It’s a utility knife, so you can use it for all kinds of things. And if you press here--” She brushes her thumb against a tiny button on the handle, and with a sizzling pop, the blade turns red “--It ignites. It can cut through almost anything then, including a stormtrooper’s armor. But you have to be very, very careful, okay? Don’t burn yourself.”

Cassian had asked Damon and Callista if they thought the vibroblade was an acceptable gift beforehand. While Callista had looked nervous, Damon had nodded, commenting, “He’ll be involved in real fights soon enough. He should be prepared.”

Now, Taraja adds, “Joreth and I are going to teach you how to use it, okay? Ethan can too, but he doesn’t know how to fight dirty, like us from the Outer Rim.”

Sebastian nods, his eyes wide. “Stars. Thanks, Taraja.”

Cassian gives Sebastian their second gift. Sebastian unwraps it, revealing a black flight jacket, the sleeves a little mended and frayed, with a dark burn mark on the jacket’s back. He turns it over in his hands as Cassian speaks.

“That was mine,” he says. “The flight jacket I was wearing when I came to Coruscant, actually. It’s Festian, so it’s black to make you stick out in snow, and it’s lined with fur, to keep you warm. It’s a little rough, and might be a little too big for you, but it still works.”

Sebastian looks up then, his gray-blue eyes wider still.

“This was yours?” He repeats.

“Yeah. I was about your age when I first got it, maybe a little older.”

Sebastian nods. He gets to his feet then, and hugs Cassian. “Thanks, Joreth.”

Cassian smiles. “You’re welcome, Seb.”

“Guess you’re a real rebel now, huh, Seb?” Ethan asks. Cassian looks over, meeting Ethan’s own gray-blue eyes. He nods at Cassian, a soft smile on his face. Callista looks similarly touched, and Cassian feels his face reddening.

He knows it isn’t _just_ a jacket, not really. It is one of only a handful of things Cassian has from Fest, one of only a couple reminders of Cassian’s homeworld. He understands that passing it on to Sebastian is a gesture, one meaning respect, and adoration, and an indicator that Cassian is ready and willing to mentor Sebastian, to help guide him through the Rebellion, and by extension, the Coruscant Underworld. And Cassian does mean all these things.

He knows Sebastian has been a little sad lately, a little uncertain, and he hopes this will help him see that he has a whole host of people here to help him.

Cassian will later look back on this moment and feel deep regret.

It is the last time he sees the Bain family together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is old EU canon that there are ewoks on Fest and I am Forever Disappointed I didn't get to include them in the Fest chapters.


	28. The Point of No Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is nineteen years old when his life on Coruscant changes forever, changing his identity, and how he thinks of himself, alongside it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a Grim chapter. Capital-G Grim. Content warning: violence, blood, dark themes. More detailed, spoiler warnings at the notes at the end.

Cassian is nineteen years old when his life on Coruscant changes forever, changing his identity, and how he thinks of himself, alongside it.

He’s at work, reading daily reports at his desk in his small office, going over the latest bits of Imperial Intelligence coming in from the Core Worlds. He still feels a little weird about having his own office, with the name on the door being First Lieutenant Joreth Sward, but he’s slowly starting to get used to it. He still keeps the space incredibly impersonal, but neat, and he has a window that looks out over Coruscant, which is something nice, at least.

Cassian’s eyes catch on a report about rebel movements in the Underworld. He makes a mental note to bring it up with Asori, the next time he sees her.

They meet infrequently now, since Cassian has graduated and started work at Imperial Intelligence, and the new year has begun at the Royal Imperial Academy. Asori has talked about finding another young rebel to enlist at the Academy, to have another cadet on the inside like she did with Cassian, but hasn’t yet managed to find a good candidate. Cassian is on the lookout, as is Taraja, who spends more time with the other rebels than Cassian does.

Privately, Cassian thinks Sebastian will likely be the one to take up Asori’s mission, in five years’ time. He thinks Sebastian is interested in going to the Academy, like his brother and Cassian, and Cassian thinks he should be able to also work undercover as they did, too.

There’s a knock on his office door. Cassian looks up, and spots his immediate supervisor, Captain Zane, peering around the doorway.

“Yes, sir?” Cassian asks.

“I have someone you should meet,” Zane says. He jerks his head, indicating Cassian should go with him. Bewildered, but hiding it, Cassian gets to his feet.

He follows Zane through the gray corridors of this Imperial building, moving past whistling droids and murmuring officers, soldiers, and stormtroopers. Everything is in shades of white, black, gray, and red, enough so that Cassian is almost convinced the colors have seeped into him, warping the soft tan color of his skin to something unnatural, staining him from the inside out. As he walks, he adjusts the jacket of his steel gray officer’s uniform; he’s been wearing it almost everyday for over six months, but he still finds it uncomfortable and faintly nauseating.

Zane leads him to an unmarked door to what Cassian knows to be an interrogation room. He frowns, unease growing in his gut. Zane knocks once and the door opens. Cassian follows him inside, turns, and has to bite his cheek to keep from yelling.

It’s Sebastian.

He’s sitting in a thin steel chair, facing two empty steel chairs. His eyes are downcast, and he’s staring at the floor, his right leg jiggling with anxiety. He’s wearing the black Festian flight jacket Cassian gave him for his eleventh birthday, three weeks previously, and his hands are clasped tight in his lap.

“Thank you,” Zane says to the stormtrooper guarding the room. The stormtrooper nods, and leaves, the door closing behind him with a loud hiss.

Zane sits in one of the empty chairs and Cassian, recognizing his cue, sinks into the one next to him.

“Okay,” Zane says. He pulls a small voice recorder from his pocket, clicking it on. “Sward, this is Sebastian Bain. He’s been giving us information on the so-called Coruscant Rebellion for the last four months. Sebastian, this is First Lieutenant Sward, a recent graduate of the Royal Imperial Academy.”

And Cassian feels like he’s on _fire_.

Because this cannot be happening. Sebastian cannot be sitting here, in this interrogation room, as an Imperial spy. He cannot be passing information on the Coruscant Rebellion to the Empire. He cannot be putting thousands of lives in peril, including the lives of his parents, and his brother, and Taraja, and Cassian.

Cassian thinks all of this as, numb, he stretches his hand out towards Sebastian.

“It’s nice to meet you, Sebastian,” he says, and his voice is ice cold, and he does not sound like himself.

Sebastian, for his part, looks stricken. He takes Cassian’s hand, shaking it quickly, before looking away again, back to the floor.

“Sebastian has information on the headquarters of the Coruscant Rebellion,” Zane says. “Go ahead, Sebastian.”

Cassian stares hard at Sebastian, his throat tight. Sebastian meets his gaze fleetingly, before returning to the floor again.

“It’s on Level 4876,” Sebastian says, and Cassian no longer feels like he’s on fire, or numb; he simply feels like he might be dying. “In an abandoned hotel. It used to be called the Outworlder.”

Zane nods, tapping one finger against his leg. “How many rebels live in this… dwelling?”

“A couple thousand, I think.”

Cassian tightens his hands together, because Sebastian is right. Over two thousand people live in the repurposed hotel on Level 4876, and have lived there, for several years. Cassian and Taraja live there right now, in Wada’s old room.

Cassian blinks, and sees the faces and names of so many others who live there.

Atheenia, the first Coruscanti rebel he ever met. Casher, and Lexis, when she’s not on her Star Destroyer, and Taraja’s team, Sauda, Mosi, Sefu, Kolya, and Tully. Asori, who doesn’t live in the building, but regularly visits to meet with others. Ethan, Callista, and Damon, who stop by with information, and to talk to other rebels, to counsel and offer support.

The repurposed hotel is the de facto home base for over two thousand rebels.

The repurposed hotel _is_ Cassian’s home on Coruscant.

Or, it was.

That’s all gone in the space it takes for Sebastian to tell the Empire about it.

It takes everything Cassian has to not lunge across the room and grab Sebastian by the shoulders, to shake him, to demand answers, to put his hands on the boy’s throat, and--

He closes his eyes.

Sebastian is eleven years old.

He’s wearing Cassian’s old flight jacket from Fest.

Cassian drags himself back to the present, in time to hear Sebastian offer up names of some of the rebels who live in the building. Sauda, Mosi, and Sefu are among them, and Cassian remembers Taraja telling him about how she introduced some of her old Mantooine team to Sebastian, just last week, when Sebastian visited the hotel, so Taraja could give him a combat lesson with the vibroblade they’d given him for his birthday.

Cassian stares at Sebastian, and he thinks, _Don’t you do it, do not do it, do not say her name._

And, somehow, Sebastian doesn’t. He doesn’t tell Zane about Taraja.

He doesn’t tell Zane about Joreth Sward either, even though he’s sitting in this room, very much without a way to escape.

This is the smallest of comforts to Cassian.

He cannot stop staring at Sebastian, and seeing the child he’d befriended, who always takes time to greet Cassian at the door, to hug him, to talk to him and listen to his war stories.

Cassian cannot comprehend what has happened, what prompted Sebastian to do this.

 _Four months he’s been doing this_.

Cassian has loved Sebastian, like he’s loved Ethan, and Callista and Damon, and this betrayal is nothing short of staggering. He feels breathless, and gutted, and he’s reminded of Zeferino, inevitably, because Zeferino was also his brother, and he also betrayed Cassian.

And _gods_ , does Cassian hate this war, and hate the Empire.

He looks at Sebastian, eleven years old, and he has no idea where he failed him.

After thirty minutes of quiet talk, wherein Sebastian upends everything Cassian has fought for on Coruscant, Zane turns the recorder off. He looks pleased.

“Thank you for your work, Sebastian,” he says. “The Empire is very grateful.”

“Yes sir,” Sebastian says, and his voice is quiet.

Zane turns to Cassian then. “We’ll have to plan for a raid. The sooner the better.”

“Yes sir,” Cassian says, and his voice is quiet.

“First Lieutenant Sward will escort you outside,” Zane continues, turning to Sebastian. “I expect to see you again very soon, Sebastian.”

“Yes sir,” Sebastian says again, and his eyes flicker to Cassian.

Cassian walks Sebastian to the elevators. They get inside, and he presses the button for the lobby, riding down forty floors in tense silence. Cassian can hear Sebastian fiddling with the zipper of the flight jacket, and Cassian forces himself to keep his hands clasped behind his back, so he doesn’t completely lose it in that moment.

He holds himself together until they’re outside, until they’re past the security cameras that dot the building, until they’re at the mouth of an alley. It is then that Cassian grabs Sebastian around the arm and drags him into the alley, pinning him roughly against the wall.

“What the hell did you do?” He hisses, and Cassian hates how he sounds, because he doesn’t sound like himself, has never sounded like this whenever he’s talked to Sebastian. “What the hell have you _done?_ ”

Sebastian’s eyes are filled with tears, and he’s trembling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m--”

“That means _nothing_ , Sebastian!” Cassian snaps, just managing to keep his voice down, aware that there are still plenty of people, plenty of Imperial soldiers, officers, and stormtroopers in the area who might be able to hear them if he yells. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done? How many people you’ve sentenced to die?”

“I just want it to be _over!_ ” Sebastian cries, and he’s sobbing now, thick tears sliding down his face, gray-blue eyes wild with fear. “I don’t want to f-fight, I w-want the war to stop, I want it to be o-over!”

Cassian stares.

He backs off a little, letting Sebastian drop to his feet.

Sebastian is eleven years old. This civil war has been going on for longer than he’s been alive. He’s seen countless war stories on the holonet, has seen his parents working for the Rebellion, has watched his brother go off to the Academy and come back scarred and exhausted, has seen Cassian, stoic and weary, hand him his old flight jacket with the promise that it’s Sebastian’s turn to fight.

Sebastian feels trapped.

“How is this better?” Cassian demands. “Telling the Empire about the Rebellion? So many people are going to die--”

“If the Rebellion stops, then my parents stop fighting,” Sebastian says. “And so does Ethan, and you, and Taraja, and--”

“But we’ll _die_ ,” Cassian snaps. “Don’t you get it? The Empire is going to raid the base, and they’ll kill anyone they find there. That means Taraja, and me, and if your parents are there, then them too, and Ethan, and two thousand others, all because you… You thought this would _stop_ the war?”

“They’ll… T-They’ll _kill?_ ”

“Of kriffing course, they will!” Cassian says. “What did you think they’d do? They won’t take the time to arrest us, not when they can burn us to death.”

“I had to do _something_ ,” says Sebastian, panic making his eyes huge. “None of you would stop fighting, and I thought… I thought…”

Sebastian is eleven years old, and far more naive than Cassian ever was.

Cassian shakes his head. “This does nothing, Sebastian. Nothing good. Only bad. We’re going to die.” Cassian straightens. He thinks of the base, and Taraja, and the apartment, and feels panic spiral in his chest.

“Go home,” he snaps, and then he turns, and runs back to the Imperial building.

Cassian thinks about leaving to warn the Rebellion, knows that the Empire has not gone to raid the base yet, but that disappearing now would only tell Zane that he’s a spy.

But oh, does he _want to go_.

In the elevator, he thinks over his options. Cassian is a First Lieutenant; he has no real power within the Empire, is basically just an office worker at this stage in Joreth Sward’s career. He defers to a whole host of officers who rank years above him, officers who are cunning and naturally suspicious, and always on the lookout for anything suspect, who would jump at the opportunity to find and question a spy. And Cassian has been a spy for four years, spends every moment of his days in the Empire constantly on alert, aware that any single wrong move could result in his torture, and slow death. If Cassian were to try to leave this building, they’d know who he really was. They’d investigate Joreth Sward, hunt him down, and then they’d dig up his Academy records, and they’d find Asori, and--

He pictures Asori, and knows what she’d tell him to do. She’d tell him to stay here, to be silent, to keep up the act and not run to the base. She’d tell him that he cannot prevent this raid that’s about to happen, but he can prevent the Empire from discovering Joreth Sward.

Cassian desperately wants to warn the Rebellion at the hotel, to tell them to run, but he just _can’t_. He doesn’t have a choice.

Cassian has helped the Rebellion greatly in his years on Coruscant, and he knows he still has more work to do as Joreth Sward.

He makes his way back to Zane’s office, his feet heavy as gray stone.

He sits in barely-restrained terror, and helps plan a devastating raid on his home, scheduled for that very night.

Cassian thinks of all the rebels he knows, everyone coming back to base to sleep and eat, and thinks of how all that is about to go up in flame.

He watches as Zane orders the first squad of stormtroopers down to Level 4876.

“Might as well get started on the reports, Sward,” Zane says, patting Cassian on the shoulder.

“Sir, can I go to observe?” Cassian asks. He looks at Zane, offering up his most inquisitive, curious mask, the one he wore whenever Gallamby spoke to him.

Zane shrugs. “I suppose. It’s your first rebel raid, is that right?”

“Yes, sir. I’d like to see it in action.”

“Understandable,” Zane says. “Very well, Sward. I expect a full report from you tomorrow morning, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

Free, Cassian goes to his office, grabs his Imperial blaster, and then runs to the nearest elevator to take him to the Underworld.

* * *

Level 4876 is on fire.

Well, the entire level isn’t. But it looks like it is.

Cassian can already hear the screaming from the repurposed hotel as he runs down the streets. Embers and sparks flit through the air around him, smoke pouring down alleys and brushing up against shop windows. He shoves past pedestrians, criminals, store owners, and customers alike, cursing furiously to himself, aware that his gray Imperial officer’s uniform sticks out in the most horrible of ways, as he rounds a corner and sees the repurposed hotel, at long last.

The ground is shaking, due to the grenades being thrown on both sides, from the stormtroopers and deathtroopers lining the block and headed inside the hotel, to the rebels pouring out of the building, coughing and choking on thick smoke and ash. Red and blue blaster fire cuts through the dark gray and black haze, the lights from the blasters almost the only form of illumination in the area. Cassian knows it shouldn’t be this dark in the Underworld, not for this time of day, and suspects either that the Empire is dimming the streetlights or the smoke is just that thick.

He takes in the sight of his home on fire, and then he runs towards the burning building.

Only a handful of rebels actually know that Cassian works undercover in the Empire, a fact that has never really troubled Cassian before. But now it stings him, as he hears their exclamations of hate and rage, directed towards him, as he slips through the throng trying to escape, fighting his way inside.

He’s accosted by one or two, but he has the upperhand, with his wits about him and not in a state of shock at how the last half an hour has unfolded at the base. He disarms the rebels swiftly enough, guilt roaring in his gut, and though he tries to be as gentle with his hits as he can, he knows he’s still causing harm, and pain, but he just has to find Taraja.

The smoke is thicker in the staircase, and Cassian passes mostly peacefully through the sobbing and screaming rebels, making his way upstream of the crowd, climbing stairs as fast as he can.

Panting and coughing, he gets to the door of his apartment, and slips inside.

He’s immediately met with a punch to his face, and he falls to his knees.

“ _Kriff_ , Taraja, it’s me!”

“Cass?” Taraja stares at him, one arm pulled back, fist ready to swing at him again. “ _Frag_ , Cass--”

She grabs his arm and yanks him to his feet. He coughs, choking a little on the smoke coming in from the hall and the blood caught at the corner of his mouth from Taraja’s punch.

“What are you doing here?” She asks, eyes wide.

“I came to get you, _obviously_ ,” Cassian snaps, moving past her and into the apartment. He sees that she’s managed to pack a couple of bags, and he runs into their room to pack one for himself.

“No,” she says, following him, and joining him in throwing his clothes and shoes into the bag. “I mean, what are you doing here, as in how did you know--”

“It was Sebastian.”

That makes her still, and she stops in her movements, staring. “ _What?_ ”

“We don’t have time to discuss this now,” Cassian hisses. “We have to go, right now, okay?”

He looks around, but he can’t find the hologram of teenage Serafima, or the one of young Cassian and Wada, and he opens his mouth to ask--

“I got your pictures, and your things from Fest, already,” Taraja says hurriedly, gesturing to the bags she’s already packed.

Cassian looks at her, feels warm affection spreading through his chest, that even in her terror and confusion, Taraja had known exactly what he’d need and taken care to include it. He swallows, and nods.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Taraja says, and she runs back to the front of the apartment. She grabs the gray-purple scarf Cassian gave her from its place on the hook by the door, and wraps it around her head, carefully tucking it over her nose and mouth, keeping only her sharp blue eyes exposed.

“Let’s go,” Cassian says, throwing Wada’s thick blue parka over his arm and his bag around his shoulder, and he grabs her hand.

They run out of the apartment without a backward glance, aware that they’re leaving most of their things behind to burn.

They have no choice.

They run down the stairs, Taraja leading the way and Cassian following. As they near the lobby, the shrieking and sobbing gets louder, as does the mechanical chatter of stormtroopers. Cassian stops Taraja, grabbing her by the arm.

“Wait,” he says.

He turns and pops open a window with his elbow, proceeding to throw his bag and Wada’s coat out of it. He takes Taraja’s bags and does the same thing, and they land in the gray street, twenty feet below.

The window is too small for them to climb out.

They aren’t eleven and thirteen anymore.

Cassian turns back to Taraja, and her eyes, the only part of her face he can see, widen in alarm at the look on his face.

“Tara, do you trust me?” He asks.

“Of course, Cass,” she says, voice barely audible over the crackling flames of their home.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and then he hits her.

She falls, as he expected she would, and he reaches out, catching her and keeping her upright. He’s punched her nose, and it’s gushing blood, and she’s gasping, staring at him in shock and confusion, and, breaking his heart, with fear.

“It hurts less if you don’t know it’s coming,” he says, an explanation, an apology, and a plea for forgiveness.

He takes his Imperial blaster, and presses it to her temple.

He wraps his other arm around her neck and drags her down the rest of the stairs, to the lobby below. They’re met by a squad of stormtroopers, who turn in unison at the noise, freezing when they spot Cassian in his Imperial officer’s uniform.

“Found this one upstairs,” says Cassian, and he puts all the intimidation and authority in his voice he can, something he learned to do in three years at the Royal Imperial Academy, and maybe even a little earlier, with his mother on Fest.

Taraja, for her part, puts up a fight, throwing her weight against the arm he has wrapped around her. But he knows she isn’t really trying to hurt him, and also that she’s likely having a hard time breathing, with the smoke and the blood from her nose.

The stormtroopers bow to Cassian’s higher ranking and nod, moving aside for them to pass through.

The firefight outside the hotel has stopped. Cassian sees squads of stormtroopers, aided by deathtroopers, and a handful of Imperial officers, rounding up groups of rebels, all of whom are coughing and bloody, faces pale and worn. There are only about thirty survivors.

Cassian keeps his head down, avoiding eye contact with any of them.

This allows him to see the bodies, hundreds and hundreds of bodies, lying in the street like trash.

Cassian tugs Taraja along with him, to the back side of the building.

He lets her go once they’re out of sight, and she gasps a little, breathing deeply, and Cassian realizes his grip around her neck must have been tighter than he intended.

“Taraja, I’m so--”

“Later,” she grunts, pulling her scarf down and wiping blood off her face. “Let’s get our things.”

They find their bags on the street and pick them up, then begin to run towards the nearest elevator. Cassian finally notices that he’s lost his officer’s cap in all the melee, and feels enormously exposed without it. He works to keep his eyes down, following Taraja’s feet, as she leads them to an elevator.

They slip inside, but don’t fully breathe until it starts to drop.

Cassian tosses his bag to the floor of the elevator and begins to strip, tearing his officer’s jacket off, wadding it up into a ball and shoving it into his bag. He picks up Wada’s blue parka and puts it on, immediately sweating more in its warmth.

Taraja doesn’t say a word.

They get off at Level 3021, well over a thousand levels below the hotel, and find a sleazy motel to stay in for the night.

As soon as Cassian shuts the door of the room, they collapse.

Taraja falls to her knees on the floor, burying her face in her hands, while Cassian presses his back to the door and slides down, his legs no longer able to keep him upright.

They pant in the darkness of the grungy motel room. They haven’t turned on any lights, and so Cassian relies on the dim streetlight from outside the window to see Taraja. She’s curled herself up, her back to him, pressing her hands and face to her legs.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and it is not enough, not enough.

He watches her back as she breathes, watches as she manages to get her breaths to slow to a more normal pace.

Eventually, she sits up, turning on her knees to face him, a couple feet of space between them.

Her nose has stopped bleeding, but her face is still covered in blood, and Cassian hates himself.

“Next time,” she murmurs, “Warn me, before you hit me.”

He closes his eyes.

“Cass… What the hell happened?”

“It was Sebastian,” he murmurs, not opening his eyes.

“You said that,” Taraja says. “What does that mean?”

“He betrayed us.”

“No,” Taraja says, a reflex.

Cassian shakes his head, feels tears pooling in his eyes. “I saw him. My superior, he called me into an interrogation room, and Sebastian was there. I sat there, and I watched Sebastian tell him where the base was, and how many people were there.” He forces himself to look at Taraja, but her horrified blue eyes only make him fall apart quicker. “He told the Empire about Sauda, and Mosi, and Sefu. I’m so sorry, Tara.”

Because this is a personal betrayal to Cassian, of course, but it’s a devastating blow to Taraja, too. Sauda, Mosi, and Sefu weren’t his family, not like they were Taraja’s. He didn’t spend two years traveling the galaxy with them, and he didn’t grow up with them on Mantooine.

Taraja emits a soft cry, doubling over again. Cassian drags himself to her side, leaning over her, the two of them still on the floor. He rubs his hands over her back as she sobs, her shoulders shaking, her grief all too familiar to Cassian.

“Four months,” he whispers, pressing his face into the space between her shoulder blades. “That’s how long Sebastian has been telling the Empire about the Rebellion. I have no idea how much they know, but it’s…”

 _It doesn’t matter_.

Anything is too much.

Taraja tears herself away from him, stumbling to her feet, making her way to the refresher. He watches as she turns the light on, and tugs the scarf from her head and shoulders, leaning over the sink and panting. He sees her face clearly for the first time, sees the blood from his hit that lingers on her mouth and chin, sees that the scarf he gave her is stained with her blood, and he bites his lip to keep himself from breaking entirely.

“ _Why?_ ” She whispers, staring at her hands in the sink.

“He said he wanted the war to end,” Cassian whispers. “He thought that ending the Rebellion would get us to stop fighting.”

“He _killed us_.”

“I know,” Cassian says. “He didn’t know, though. He’s a child, he…”

“No,” Taraja snaps. She straightens and goes back to the main room, standing over Cassian, who’s still stuck on the floor.

“He’s stupid. You and I were children, Cassian, and we chose to fight for this Rebellion. We _chose_ this. And it’s a choice we continue to make, every. Single. Day. Because this fight is for our _lives_ , and for our futures. This is what we _do_ , this is who we _are_.”

Cassian has never seen Taraja like this, spitting angry, her blue eyes dancing with ice cold fire. He finds himself transfixed, as he agrees with everything she says.

“He killed my _family_ ,” Taraja says, her voice dead and annihilating like shrapnel. “They’re dead, they’re all dead…”

“I’m so sorry,” Cassian says again.

“It isn’t your fault, Cass.”

“I should’ve known,” Cassian says. “I’ve known Sebastian for four years, Taraja, and I should’ve seen this coming. Callista told me, and I saw, he hasn’t been the same, he’s been distant and sad for months, and Tara, this is what I _do_ , I read people, I know what they’re thinking and planning, and I…”

He buries his face in his hands.

Taraja drops to the floor next to him, and runs her hands through his short hair.

“He was your friend,” Taraja says softly. “He betrayed you too. It’s okay to be surprised.”

“None of this is okay.”

“I know,” she agrees. “We just… Look, we’ll take tonight, and we’ll sleep, and then tomorrow we’ll try to get in touch with the others, and we’ll figure out the next step. We can move on from this.”

Cassian looks up, sees the pain in her blue eyes, and he knows there is no moving on from this. Not really.

He sees only one option.

“I have to go,” he says, and he gets off the floor.

Taraja leaps to her feet next to him, her face alarmed. “What? Where?”

“Stay here. I’ll be back later.”

“I don’t think so,” she says, grabbing his arm. “Cassian, what are you going to do?”

Cassian looks at her, and she recoils from him, for the second time that night. Because she understands him so well, too well, can read him so brilliantly, she sees what he’s planning. Her black skin turns ashen, and she shakes her head.

“No… Cass, you don’t… There’s another--”

“We don’t know what he’ll do next,” Cassian whispers. “Or if he’ll do this again. Now, or later. We can’t trust him, and he obviously knows too much. He hasn’t given them our names yet, but he could be persuaded to. The Empire knows his name, they know where to find him. It’s only a matter of time before he tells them, forced or not, something that this Rebellion cannot recover from. We’ll lose everything. And if we lose everything, then what was the point of all of our sacrifices? What was the point of _us?_ ”

Cassian has lost so many people to this war. He has lost his mother, his father, and his sister. He has lost Wada, who died in the service of this very specific Rebellion group on Coruscant. That can’t have been for nothing. He refuses to let it be for nothing.

Taraja stares at him, her eyes beseeching. But she must see the resolution in Cassian’s, must see the hardened determination, the fury, and the righteousness, for she deflates.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Don’t,” Cassian advises her.

“No,” she says. “I’m with you.”

Cassian swallows hard, but nods. Taraja retrieves her scarf from the refresher and wraps it around her head, while Cassian trades Wada’s parka for a lighter jacket, and grabs his Rodian pistol from his bag.

They walk back out into the night.

They take an elevator to the surface, and from there, they take a transport to CoCo Town.

They walk in silence past Damon and Callista’s store, to their apartment.

Cassian doesn’t bother with knocking. He uses his lockpick kit, another old gift from Wada, and gets the door open.

The apartment is quiet, as he anticipated. Because Damon and Callista are good people, and when Sebastian came home sobbing and confessed what he’d done, they would’ve gone to find other rebels, to try and warn as many people as they could.

Cassian knows all this, because he knows Damon and Callista.

They’ve fed him, and cared for him, and adored him, and now he’s going to kill their son.

Sebastian is in his room, sitting on his bed, just where Cassian guessed he would be.

He looks up and freezes when he sees Cassian, though his face relaxes somewhat when he spots Taraja.

“Taraja,” he whispers. “You’re alive.”

Taraja nods, and there are tears coursing down her face.

“You got hurt?” Sebastian asks, spotting the dried blood on her face that she hasn’t gotten a chance to wash off.

Taraja whimpers, and looks away.

Cassian crosses the room and kneels in front of Sebastian.

“The Empire raided the base,” he says, voice deadened. “They set it on fire. They shot every rebel they could see, hundreds and hundreds of them. They’re dead now. There are only about thirty survivors, and they’re all going to be tortured for information, and then put in prison for life, or executed. They will never be free again.”

Sebastian looks like he’s been hit by lightning. His lip starts trembling.

“Their fight continues,” Cassian says. “Their cause. The Rebellion. It took one hell of a hit today, but it will keep going. I will not let it fall. I will not let it fail. I’m not going to stop fighting, and neither will Taraja. We will die for the Rebellion, one day. Just not today.”

“I’m sorry, Joreth,” Sebastian whispers.

“You need to tell me what you’ve told the Empire, everything, in the last four months.”

And Sebastian does. He recites lists of names, and information on how the rebels move around Coruscant. He gives a sketch of the rumors he’s heard about other Rebellions, including the Fest Rebellion that Cassian has told him about.

Cassian’s breath catches when Sebastian tells him that he told the Empire that they have, and have had, rebel spies at the Royal Imperial Academy.

Sebastian doesn’t know Asori’s name, however, so she’s still alive, and anonymous.

“Why did you not tell them my name?” Cassian asks.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Sebastian whispers. Cassian hears Taraja’s muffled whimper from behind him.

“I did get hurt, Seb,” Cassian murmurs. “I lost my home today. Taraja lost her family. The Empire might still put your information together and realize I’m the spy. They could torture me, and I could break, and I’d tell them about my mentor at the Academy, and they could torture her too, and the Coruscant Rebellion might not survive losing her. And that would be catastrophic. Everything we’ve done would be for nothing.”

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian says, again.

Sebastian is eleven years old.

“I know,” Cassian says.

He leans forward and wraps Sebastian in his arms, feeling the boy press his face into the crook of Cassian’s neck.

“I won’t do it again,” Sebastian says.

Slowly, so as to not jostle Sebastian, Cassian pulls the Rodian pistol from his jacket.

“I know,” he says.

He kisses the side of Sebastian’s head, and then he shoots him.

Sebastian dies instantly, going limp in Cassian’s arms, his blood staining Cassian’s shirt for the space of a dozen of Cassian’s heartbeats before stopping entirely.

Taraja bursts into loud sobs behind him.

Cassian lays Sebastian back down in his bed. He pulls the blankets over the boy, and closes his vacant gray-blue eyes. He looks like he could be sleeping.

Cassian stays there, kneeling on the floor as minutes pass, staring at Sebastian.

Cassian is nineteen years old.

Nineteen years old, and apparently, a person who kills children.

A person. A monster.

He closes his eyes tightly.

_It’s for the Rebellion. For the good of the Rebellion._

_Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion._

_I’m justified_.

He wishes he could convince himself of it.

He gets to his feet, before the grief and self-loathing can overwhelm him, or convince him to do another gruesome act, like press his pistol to his own head.

He looks at Taraja and thinks that if she hadn’t been there, he very well might have.

“Am I…” He swallows. “What am I?”

Unbidden, he blinks, and he sees the dark trooper, the man turned machine, and he’s suddenly twelve years old again, and struggling with something so terrible and unnatural.

Encountering someone who’d lost their humanity in service to their cause.

 _The Rebellion would never destroy someone’s humanity to create a lethal killing machine_ , twelve-year-old Cassian thought, and nineteen-year-old Cassian wants to cry at his bitterness, the barbarity of it all.

Cassian may never have been as naive as Sebastian, but he can remember a time when he was still innocent.

“Someone who does the terrible things no one else can,” Taraja says, looking at him, unblinkingly. “For the Rebellion.”

“I think I crossed a line,” Cassian whispers. “I don’t think I can come back from this.”

Taraja shakes her head. “I will drag you back myself. I’m with you, okay? No matter what. Even this.”

She glances at Sebastian’s body, tucked in his bed, and looks back at Cassian.

She holds her hand out, and he sees more understanding and compassion in her gaze than he knows what to do with, more than he knows he deserves.

“Let’s go,” Taraja says.

Cassian takes her hand, and lets her lead him out of Sebastian’s room, and out of the Bain family’s apartment.

He looks around it as they leave, aware that he will never come back.

He can’t.

He isn’t sure if Callista and Damon will realize he killed Sebastian. He doesn’t know if Sebastian told them about Cassian being there when he told the Empire about the base, if from this they will realize that Cassian escaped the base and went to their apartment, while they were gone, trying to save the rebels their son had betrayed.

For Cassian, it doesn’t matter. He can’t ever look at them again, not with the murder of their son in his heart.

He and Taraja reach the street outside and make it four steps before a voice calls to them.

“Cassian! Taraja!”

 _Of course_ , Cassian thinks. He closes his eyes for a moment before turning, coming face-to-face with Ethan.

Ethan is panting, his face red from exertion, his gray-blue eyes wild with relief. He runs straight to Cassian, throwing his arms around him.

“Kriff, am I happy to see you two,” he grunts. “I just got a message from Ma. She told me what Seb did, and about the base, and I… I thought you might’ve been killed.”

He steps back, gripping Cassian’s shoulders in his hands, but the relief in his eyes fades as he takes in the stoniness, the lifelessness, in Cassian’s face.

“What is it?” He asks. “Did you go to see Seb? Is he okay?”

“Ethan,” Cassian whispers.

“What?” Ethan repeats.

Cassian is already shaking his head, and Ethan pales.

“No,” he murmurs. “He’s… He’s dead? What… What the _hell_ , what did, he wouldn’t--”

“Ethan,” Taraja tries, but Cassian looks at her sharply, and shakes his head.

Ethan watches this exchange, his devastation turning to grim suspicion.

“What did you do,” he whispers, and he is Cassian, who Cassian was hours ago, cornering Sebastian in the alley. But this time, Ethan yells.

He fists Cassian’s jacket in his hands, shaking him.

“What did you do, Cassian?” He yells, and bizarrely, Cassian thinks that it’s still weird to hear Ethan call him by his real name, since he spent four years calling him Joreth.

He thinks it’s fitting, to hear Ethan say it now.

Ethan’s schoolmate Joreth Sward did not kill Sebastian. Cassian Andor did.

“I did what I had to do,” says Cassian, and he hopes it’s the truth.

Cassian is punched, for the second time that night.

But unlike Taraja, Ethan is bigger than Cassian, with an extra thirty pounds on him, and he learned how to inflict the most pain from the Academy. His punch lands on Cassian’s nose, and Cassian hears a distinct _crack_ , and feels warm blood spill across his face. He falls, landing hard on the street.

“ _You killed my brother!_ ” Ethan cries, and it is a primal howl of grief that cuts Cassian deeply. “You son of a _harpy_ , you murderer, you killed a _child!_ ”

Cassian looks back up at him in time to receive another blow to his face. He returns to the pavement, gasping. His ears are ringing, and dimly, he thinks he can hear Taraja yelling, but Ethan’s savage roars overwhelm her voice.

“I _trusted you_ ,” Ethan cries, dragging Cassian up by the collar of his shirt to hit him again. “We loved you, you absolute kriffing--”

And Cassian doesn’t even try to defend himself.

He lets Ethan hit him, doesn’t bother to deflect the blows. He wants to feel them, wants the scars and the bruises and the broken bones. He deserves them. Ethan’s only telling the truth.

As his vision blurs, he thinks Ethan might actually kill him, and finds he isn’t too bothered by this.

But Taraja is there, and it is her presence that saves his life, for the second time that night.

She trains her pistol on Ethan.

“Back _off_ ,” she snaps.

The anger in her voice gives Ethan pause. He turns, his raised fist red with Cassian’s blood, where he’s standing over Cassian, who’s sprawled on the sidewalk.

“You were _there_ ,” Ethan realizes, and he takes a step towards her, but Taraja clicks the safety off the pistol and he stops in his tracks.

“It was kind,” she says, voice firm. “He didn’t suffer. He didn’t see it coming.”

“Wow, a kind death for my baby brother,” Ethan snarls. “That’s one hell of a comfort. I’m sure that really matters to him, now that he’s dead.”

They’ve started to attract attention on this street in CoCo Town, even at this late of an hour. Ethan has not been holding back in his screams and attack, and Taraja’s defensive stand now is eye-catching.

“It is meant for you, Ethan,” she says. “Cassian did what he had to do, for the Rebellion. It’s ugly, and it’s awful, but sometimes that’s what we have to do.”

“Then I want _no part of it_.”

“Ethan,” Cassian tries, and Ethan turns, ready to unleash on Cassian again, but Taraja shoots Ethan.

Her shot lands in Ethan’s leg and he gasps, toppling over.

“If I wasn’t here, he’d let you keep beating him, until you killed him,” she snaps, glaring at Ethan. “But I am here, and I am not going to let him die on this miserable street.”

She goes to Cassian then, holstering her pistol. She wraps her arm around his waist and drapes his arm around her shoulders and hauls him to his feet. He gasps, his head spinning, his vision still blurry and blacked-out in places.

Sirens are in the distance, but coming ever closer.

“I’m done with your kriffing Rebellion,” Ethan calls, his voice somehow carrying in the air, as Taraja tugs Cassian with her to an elevator that will take them back down to the Underworld, back to the shadows and despair, back to where they truly belong.

“And I’m done with _you_ , Cassian Andor, or Joreth Sward, or whoever the hell you are,” Ethan adds, and he sounds so foreign and strange to Cassian, not his closest friend, not his first Coruscant Rebellion recruit, not the man he thinks of as a brother.

Cassian closes his eyes.

He leans on Taraja, and lets her guide them away.

* * *

Cassian spends the rest of the night in a daze.

He remembers Taraja all but dragging him back down to the miserable motel in the Underworld. He remembers her shouldering the door of the room open and pulling him inside. He remembers her throwing all reason out the window, and carrying him into the refresher with her, and then turning the shower on, and ducking them both under it, clothes and all.

He remembers her tugging off her scarf, and his jacket, and their shoes, until they’re both sitting under the hot water, clothed but barefoot.

He remembers her cupping handfuls of water and using that to help her scrub the blood off of their faces.

He remembers thinking _Not good, not good, not good_.

He remembers realizing he was speaking out loud.

He remembers her voice, repeating a mantra, “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.”

He remembers her pressing her forehead to his, and telling him, “I love you.”

He remembers thinking how he’d waited so long to hear those words from her, but how he felt numb to them, how he felt them slide off his skin, to linger in the shower drain.

He remembers asking her, “Is it worth it?”

He remembers her sad blue eyes, and the resolute nod of her head.

He remembers thinking that he wasn’t sure if he was asking her if it was worth loving him, or if the Rebellion, if any of this, if any of the crimes they’ve committed, the lives they’ve ended, have been justified.

He remembers thinking that he has to choose to believe it is, to believe in the Rebellion, to believe that he will eventually be exonerated for his crimes, or else he’ll have nothing. He’ll lose himself entirely, and then, what’s the point?

He remembers Taraja turning the water off and toweling them both dry, and he remembers taking his clothes off and pulling on the sleep clothes she hands to him, sleep clothes that do not smell like smoke, or are coated in gray ash, or stained with his blood, or Sebastian’s.

He remembers her leading him to the bed, pulling him up alongside her, curling up against him, and fisting his shirt in her hand, like she was scared he was going to disappear if she didn’t hold onto him.

He remembers wanting to disappear.

Cassian spends the night in a daze, but it is not a night he ever forgets.

It’s one he carries with him, for the rest of his life. One he forces his mind to bury, to keep hidden, to walk away from and pretend never happened.

But it did, and he’ll always have it.

Cassian is nineteen years old.

He has no idea if he will ever be granted absolution.

He is only certain of one thing: that he will never, ever, deserve it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler content warning: death of a child. (Sebastian betrays the Rebellion, and Cassian kills him.)
> 
> Definitely a big turning point, wherein Cassian realizes how far he's willing to go for the cause. I was just struck, watching that intro scene of Cassian in ROGUE ONE, where he kills Tivik, how gentle and comforting he was before he killed him, that it was something he'd done before.


	29. A Pet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weeks that follow the raid and desecration of the repurposed hotel are some of the most difficult of Cassian’s life.

The weeks that follow the raid and desecration of the repurposed hotel are some of the most difficult of Cassian’s life.

Perhaps thankfully, Cassian will not remember many specific details. He does remember messaging work the morning after, claiming that he can’t come in, as he’s inhaled smoke from the burning of the base, and his throat is charred. Zane messages him back quickly enough, buying the excuse, and admonishing Cassian for not wearing a breath mask, because the Coruscant Underworld is filthy and polluted, and he should know better.

In reality, Cassian cannot go to work because he doesn’t know if Ethan has yet revealed who Joreth Sward is.

And also in reality, Cassian wakes up the morning after he kills Sebastian and realizes he cannot speak at all.

He sends his message to Zane, and then lies back down in the grimy bed in the miserable motel room. Taraja is there, and she keeps the door to the refresher open as she takes a shower, and Cassian catches her peeking around the door of the shower to check on him every couple of minutes.

He knows she’s worried about him, unsure how he’s going to behave, now that the night has ended and he has to reckon with what he’s done.

Cassian isn’t even sure what he’s going to do next.

Taraja takes it upon herself to handle everything. He stares at the ceiling as she patches into rebel channels, sending out a series of coded messages confirming that she and Cassian are still alive. He listens to his slow breathing as she manages to get in touch with someone, and he listens to her soft voice, murmuring across the room.

She reminds him of Zeferino, he thinks, bitterly, remembering how Zeferino was the one to get in touch with Serafima’s boss, and organize her pottery orders, and plan her funeral, in the days following her death. Taraja is the same in that she responds to a crisis with a strength and coolness that Cassian does not possess.

She lets Cassian lie in bed until half the day has passed, and then she tells him that they’re going out to find something to eat.

“I’m not hungry,” he says, voice rough from not speaking for hours and hours. He’s telling the truth. He can’t feel anything at all.

“I know. But I am.”

“You’ve gone on your own to get food before.”

“Cassian, I am not leaving you alone,” she snaps. He turns his head to look at her, and sees her exhaustion, and a rabid fear in her eyes. It’s enough to give him pause.

“I’ll be fine,” he says.

She shakes her head. “That’s probably true. But I. I’m not _certain_. I wish I could believe you.”

“Even if Ethan’s told them about me, they won’t find me here--”

“Cassian, I’m not scared of the Empire killing you, I’m scared of _you_ killing you!”

Cassian’s breath catches. “Taraja…”

“You didn’t see yourself last night, or hell, all of today,” she says, voice sharp and almost angry. “You aren’t talking, and you’re just staring at the ceiling and barely moving, and you’ve just… I know you’re messed up. Believe me. I _know_. I am too. But you’re scaring me, Cass. Please.”

And Cassian really can’t argue.

He knows what she’s talking about.

He feels it too.

He gets off the bed, and pulls on clean clothes. His body aches as he moves, and he spots bruises yellowing his tan skin, and he gives himself a doubletake when he looks in the mirror.

Taraja had managed to scrub the blood from his face, but his nose is a little crooked, and his lip is split. Ethan has given him a black eye, and there’s a prominent blue bruise blossoming on his left cheekbone. He finds that raising his eyebrows or widening his eyes only causes his face to ache, and so he keeps his face passive and emotionless.

He thinks he would’ve kept his face this lifeless anyway, but at least now he has the luxury of an excuse.

He blinks, and remembers Asori’s advice, when he’d asked her how she’d managed to watch holovids, and read reports, of brutal murders of rebels by the Empire.

_“You’ll get used to it. I know that sounds impossible. But you will. You learn to disconnect from it all. Impassivity is survival.”_

Cassian turns away from his reflection.

They leave the motel and find a dingy cafe to eat in. Taraja eats with enthusiasm, while Cassian spends most of the meal staring into his cup of caf. He can feel her eyes on him but he keeps his downcast; he doesn’t want to deal with her disappointment, or her frustration.

She orders bacon and toast for him to go. As they walk back to the motel, she wraps her arm around his waist, and leans her head against his.

She’s trying, very hard, and he knows he should too.

He contacts Asori.

She makes her way down to the Underworld that night, and knocks on the door of Cassian and Taraja’s room.

Cassian opens the door.

She stares at him.

“You look like sithspit, Cassian.”

Cassian sighs, but nods his head. Asori stuns him by stepping forward and wrapping him in her arms, hugging him with a warmth he only remembers her displaying when she hugged him after he told her about the prison.

“It’s good to see you,” she says, voice soft and somewhat muffled by his shoulder, and he realizes that she might not have known he had survived the raid until he contacted her.

Cassian returns the hug, pressing his face into her black hair. “Yeah. You too, Asori.”

He invites her inside, and he watches as she looks around the miserable room, at the cracked window and grimy sink, undoubtedly noticing the blood-covered clothes from yesterday that Cassian and Taraja have tried to wash, and left hanging in the refresher to dry. Taraja hovers in a corner, arms crossed, face stricken.

After taking the space in, Asori sighs, and tugs off her black gloves. She’s wearing civilian clothes, an anomaly for her; Cassian can count the number of times he’s seen her out of her gray Imperial officer’s uniform on one hand. She surprises Cassian by sinking to the floor, and pulling a bottle of Tevraki whiskey out from under her coat. She offers the bottle to Cassian, who takes it.

“I didn’t think to bring glasses, so we’re all going to get very cozy,” she says, and Cassian huffs an approximation of a snort.

Asori pats the space in front of her.

“Sit down. Tell me everything.”

Cassian drops to the floor, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. Taraja slides down next to him, crossing her legs and folding her hands.

He opens the bottle of whiskey with his pocketknife, and takes a long swig. He can feel Taraja’s eyes on him, disapproving, as he hasn’t eaten a thing since the day previously.

The whiskey burns like fire, settling into his empty stomach and filling him with a much-needed warmth. Cassian gathers himself together, and glances at Taraja.

In halting voices, they recount the events of the last twenty-four hours.

Asori is a patient and learned listener, and she keeps eye contact with the two young people as they describe their experiences. Cassian tells her about seeing Sebastian in the interrogation room, and confronting him after. He tells her about deciding not to warn the Rebellion, choosing to keep his cover instead. He tells her about running to the Underworld as soon as he could, and seeing the base on fire.

Taraja describes the stormtroopers marching on the base, and the panic and terror they caused. She describes trying to shepherd out as many rebels as she could, and then she describes going back to their room to send a message, warning other rebels to stay away. She talks about Cassian arriving, and how they escaped.

They talk about coming down to this cold, shadowy lower level.

Cassian tells Asori about deciding to kill Sebastian.

Asori’s expression doesn’t change. She only nods, and urges him to continue.

Cassian tells her about going up to CoCo Town. He tells her what Sebastian said, the other information he gave the Empire, and he sees her face, her warm russet-colored skin that has only been whitening more and more as Cassian and Taraja have spoken, all but bleaching as he tells her that the Empire now knows there are spies at the Academy.

But she doesn’t interrupt him, and Cassian is grateful for that.

He tells her about shooting Sebastian. He tells her about leaving the apartment. He tells her about Ethan finding them. He gestures at his bruised face, an explanation and description all in one.

Taraja tells Asori she shot Ethan, but left him alive, on the street. She describes gathering Cassian off the pavement, and carrying him to the Underworld, where they’ve been ever since.

Asori grips the half-empty whiskey bottle in her hands, and stares at the thin carpet once they’ve finished.

Cassian and Taraja wait in silence. Minutes pass.

At long last, Asori exhales loudly, and nods her head.

“All right,” she murmurs. She looks up then, and Cassian forces himself to meet her eyes.

Asori is over a quarter of a century older than Cassian, has always been twice his age, but in this moment, he thinks she looks absolutely ancient.

“I’m sorry, Cassian.”

“Did I do the right thing?”

His voice is small, because he feels small, fragile and close to collapse.

“You did the correct thing,” Asori says. “You did exactly what I would’ve done. I… I can’t imagine ever actually doing it, but yes, Cassian. You did the correct thing.”

“But was it _right?_ ”

At that, she has to look away. Cassian swallows.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know if it was right. It was correct, absolutely, and the Rebellion thanks you for your service. But I can’t tell you if it was right.”

It is, perhaps, the most honest Asori has ever been with him. She isn’t granting him absolution (how could she?) but she’s telling him that his decisions were understandable, and necessary. She’s telling him that she would’ve done the same thing, with the implication here meaning the Rebellion will accept Cassian’s actions, his choices.

“We all sacrifice, for the good of the Rebellion,” Asori says. “And it is never pleasant, and it is always questionable. We prioritize the cause over our personal health, our happiness, our lives. And yesterday, you took that a step further, and sacrificed much of your conscience for this Rebellion.”

Cassian looks at her. She swallows, and hands the whiskey back to him.

“I have always asked far too much of you,” she says. “And every time, you somehow not only do what I ask, but more, too.”

“He was a child, Asori,” Cassian whispers. “Eleven years old. I met him when he was seven, I’ve seen him grown up, I loved him like he was a brother, and I killed him.”

“I know,” Asori says. “I can’t imagine the pain you must be feeling. But it was the only thing you could do, or else the work of so many, the lives of thousands, would’ve been for nothing. We are still very small in number, Cassian. If Sebastian had continued to tell the Empire of our existence, we would’ve been completely exterminated. Thousands would die, rather than one boy. The cause must survive, for the good of this galaxy.”

She looks at the floor. “I imagine you’ll always feel this despair. I hope you understand that no one blames you for what you did. We can all only dream to be as dedicated, and loyal to the Rebellion, to do something so unpalatable.”

“Ethan blames me,” Cassian murmurs. “Asori, I can’t go back to work in Imperial Intelligence, they’re going to find out--”

“They aren’t.”

Her voice is hard, and brokers no argument. Cassian looks at Taraja, but she shakes her head, also confused by Asori’s certainty.

“How do you know?” Cassian asks.

“Ethan came to me, this morning.”

Cassian freezes. Desperate for something to anchor himself, he stretches his arm out, and finds Taraja’s hand. She squeezes back tightly.

“I had to go to work, of course, but I was also aware of the raid,” Asori says. “Ethan showed up in my office after morning classes. He looked terrible, and my first thought was that _you_ were dead, Cassian. But he only came to tell me that he was resigning from the Rebellion, effective immediately.” She looks at Cassian. “When I asked why, he said it was because you had killed his brother, and that was something he could not forgive or ignore.”

“I know,” Cassian murmurs.

“I told him that it was his choice, and I was sorry to hear it,” Asori says. “I didn’t know the circumstances, of course, but I could not imagine you killing a child for no reason. This was confirmed to me, when Ethan told me that he would not be outing Cassian Andor to the Empire.”

It takes Cassian a full thirty seconds to process this.

“He… He isn’t. But why not?”

Asori’s face is sad, so sad. “He said that you should consider it a thank you, for four years of friendship.”

“Kriff,” Cassian whispers, and he pulls away from Taraja to bury his face in his hands. He can feel Taraja settle her hand on his back, telling him that she’s still there.

“I reminded him that he could also not inform the Empire about Joreth Sward without inadvertently revealing himself in the process,” Asori says, and the darkness in her voice makes Cassian look up again. “He already knew this of course. He didn’t seem too concerned. So I told him that if it’s discovered that rebel spy Cassian Andor has been infiltrating the Empire as Intelligence Lieutenant Joreth Sward, that I will hold Ethan Bain responsible, and seek swift and devastating retribution.”

“Asori--”

“I know you think you deserve nothing less than torture and slow death from the Empire for Sebastian,” Asori snaps. “But as long as I’m the head of this Rebellion, I will not let it happen. Not while I can help it.”

It is so similar to what Taraja has said to him, that she won’t let Cassian die while she’s around to prevent it, that Cassian’s chest hurts. He can only nod, and reach out to Asori. She grasps his hand in both of hers.

“Thank you,” he says.

She smiles a little.

“Cassian, I like you. Plus, you’re the best I’ve got.”

He knows she means well, knows she thinks she’s giving him praise, but it is the same thing Gallamby said to Cassian before he told him to murder a room of unarmed prisoners.

Cassian swallows the bile in his throat, and nods.

* * *

Cassian is twenty years old, and desperate for hope.

He and Taraja move into their own apartment, on Level 4354. They’re living in a real apartment building now, with quiet, rarely-seen working-class neighbors who aren’t in the Rebellion. The Coruscant Rebellion has not yet managed to find a suitable replacement base, and so they’ve spread out for the time being, with some rebels migrating to groups on other sectors of the planet.

Cassian and Taraja settle in their new place two weeks after the raid.

It’s small, like the hotel apartment was, but it’s near a holovid store Taraja likes and a restaurant that serves food from an assortment of Outer Rim planets, including Fest, which fills Cassian with nostalgia and sorrow. They frequent the restaurant, often enough that the cook starts making their regular order as soon as he spots them in the doorway.

Taraja bakes a Mantooian cake for Cassian’s twentieth birthday, three months after the raid and Sebastian’s death. The cake is a soft brown color, and light, and incredibly sweet, in flavor and the gesture.

“Thank you,” Cassian says, kissing her and tugging her down to sit on his lap on the couch in the front room.

She runs her fingers over his face, carefully skirting his still-brittle nose. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Cassian says. “Or, I’m getting there, at least.” He pauses, and somewhat out of the blue says, “My mother’s been dead for ten years.”

Ten years and a day, tomorrow, to be exact.

Taraja’s warm smile turns somber. “Ah. I’m sorry, Cass.”

She knows quite a lot about Serafima, for Cassian has told her about as much as he can remember. And she has a visual guide, in the form of the hologram of teenage Serafima from Sernpidal.

“She’s been gone for half my life,” Cassian says. “But I still miss her, very much.”

“She was your mother,” Taraja says. “Of course you do. There’s no shame in it.”

Taraja can, of course, relate to losing a mother, and she lost hers much more recently than Cassian, with her mother dying when Taraja was seventeen. Taraja is twenty-two now, but lost a surrogate mother, in the form of Sauda, only a few months previously, when Sebastian gave the Empire her name and she died in the ensuing raid.

“I know,” Cassian says.

And he does, he thinks, know he shouldn’t be ashamed for missing his mother. He chooses to think that’s why he aches when he thinks of her, just the sheer fact that he misses her, and not because of his real fear that she’d be horrified at the man he has become in the years without her.

“Hm.” Taraja looks into his eyes, searching for what, Cassian can’t tell. “Maybe we should get a pet.”

Cassian laughs. “Really? A pet?”

“Yeah. I read that they can be quite comforting, and Cass, we could really use all the help we can get.” She lets Cassian think about this for a moment before adding, “Maybe a cat. A small cat though, not giant like those tusk cats. A cat might be nice. It’d be fairly self-sufficient.”

“Are you saying we’d be that bad at taking care of it?”

“I don’t know anything about pets,” Taraja says. “We should get a smart one that could tell us when we’re ignoring it. Like a cat.”

“Like a cat,” Cassian repeats.

* * *

They don’t get a cat.

They don’t even get an animal, for a pet.

Cassian is struck by inspiration, or madness, at work one day, when he visits one of the Empire’s many hangars to review a recently completed _Theta_ -class barge. It’s a dropship, and boxy and ugly, but its shape reminds Cassian of Wada’s old Rodian ship, the one he’d taught Cassian to pilot in. It is this train of thought, of Wada and piloting and time spent in repair shops and fixing things, that Cassian is lost in when he catches sight of a droid shuffling across the hangar.

It’s a KX-series security droid, seven feet tall, with a hulking gray body and the Imperial crest on its shoulders.

Before he really knows what he’s doing, Cassian is crossing the hangar to intercept it.

The droid spots him, recognizes the ranking on his gray Imperial officer’s uniform, and stops, standing straight.

“Yes, sir?” It asks, in vaguely-accented Basic.

“What are you doing?” Cassian asks.

“I am loading ammunition into the new _Theta_ -class barge, Lieutenant.”

“Come with me,” Cassian says, and turns on his heel. He hears the dull clunking of the droid behind him, following obediently.

He leads the droid back to the small ship he’d taken to get to the hangar, and directs the droid inside. It sits in the co-pilot’s chair, a fair assumption, and Cassian waits until it seems settled and is idly looking out the window before he pounces, jabbing an electro-prod in the back of the droid’s neck, in the jack used to connect the droid to a computer system. The droid quivers with the shock of electricity before powering off with a soft hum, and collapsing uselessly in its chair.

Cassian looks at it, nods, and goes back to the hangar.

He takes the droid back to the apartment with him after work. Taraja is not there, away on a mission with her remaining Mantooine teammates Tully and Kolya, and so Cassian makes a mess of the place, taking the droid apart. He’s stolen a toolkit from work and has it open at his feet, and he’s mentally reviewing everything Wada ever told him about how to reprogram a droid as he works.

 _“The key to reprogramming a droid is to give it purpose._ ”

Cassian thinks he could’ve picked an easier droid to reprogram. Security droids, like the KX-series, are programmed specifically to resist an outsider’s intervention.

Taraja returns to the apartment a day later, to find Cassian on the floor, scanning the files in the droid’s memory chip, the droid strewn in pieces around him.

“I…” She starts, and stops, settling for staring. “Cassian.”

“Mm? Oh, hi, Tara.”

“Why is there an Imperial droid in our apartment.”

“I’m reprogramming it.”

Taraja blinks. “You can do that?”

“ _Droids function almost solely through purpose, but we can give it even more than that.”_

“We’re going to find out,” Cassian says. “Wada taught me but I haven’t tried it on my own before.”

“So you… You thought you’d bring an Imperial security droid to our _home,_ and… try here.”

“Might not be my best idea,” Cassian says.

Taraja sighs, going to his side and bending over to press a kiss to his head. “I spent the last two days hiding in a fishery, so I am going to take a shower, and then I am going to take a nap. Scream if the droid turns on you.”

“I most definitely will.”

She walks away, and Cassian takes the memory chip, holding it to the light.

A week after that, following a week of reprogramming, redressing, rewiring, and a short dive into an Imperial database on the manufacturing of KX-series security droids, he puts the droid back together.

_“We can give it a personal identity: individuality. We teach the droid to doubt, and to be cynical, but also to be aware of repercussions and fallout.”_

“Okay,” Cassian murmurs, once he’s screwed the droid’s head back on. He wipes his forehead with the back of his arm, standing there in his oldest and most stained of civilian clothes, now bearing additional stains of oil and grease. “Here we go.”

He flicks the droid’s on-switch.

There’s a soft hum, as the thing powers up, the fingers moving first, and then the knee joints and elbows. Cassian takes a step back, standing over the droid, where he has it leaned against the wall, sitting on the floor of the apartment’s front room.

He holds his breath, as the droid’s eyes flicker on.

“ _Oh_ ,” the droid says, and it sounds almost comically surprised.

Cassian watches as the droid looks at its hands, flexing its fingers. He clears his throat. The droid turns its head, peering up at him.

“Can you hear me?” Cassian asks.

“Oh, yes,” the droid says.

“What’s your name?”

“My name is K-2SO,” the droid says. “I am a KX-series security droid. I’m an Imperial… No… Wait…”

Cassian smiles at the droid’s confusion.

“Yeah,” he says. “You aren’t an Imperial droid anymore.”

“What… What am I?”

_“Droids love to compute, and we will teach this droid that there are more things to factor in than just the number of lives that can be lost in a battle scenario, for example; we will teach the droid to consider which lives are lost, and what they mean.”_

Cassian kneels in front of the droid, which has not taken its eyes off him since he turned it back on. He thinks the droid still looks surprised, though he knows this isn’t possible, not really; it can’t display emotions or expressions.

(But it _can_.)

“You’re good now,” Cassian says.

The droid turns its head, still staring at him.

“Who are you?”

“ _We will teach the droid that it is possible to prioritize some lives over others, even if that means losing ten men rather than just one._ ”

Cassian grins, and holds out his hand. “I’m Cassian Andor. I work for the Coruscant Rebellion. You do too, now.”

“Cassian Andor,” the droid repeats, hesitantly accepting Cassian’s handshake. “Hello.”

“Hello, Kay-Tuesso.”

* * *

When Taraja comes home that night, it is to find Cassian in the tiny kitchen of the apartment, with the security droid standing behind him, watching over his shoulder as he cooks dinner.

“Cass,” Taraja says, voice a squeak.

The droid turns and looks at her. “Taraja Ya’qul,” the droid says. “Cassian has told me all about you.” It holds out its hand and Taraja, automatically, takes it.

“Cass,” she repeats, staring at the Imperial droid gently shaking her hand.

“His name is K-2SO,” Cassian says. “But he likes to go by Kay.”

“He… He _likes_ to go by Kay.”

“I feel more like Kay,” K-2SO says. “Or Kay-Tu. I am not used to having opinions on this.”

“ _Cass_ ,” Taraja says, overwhelmed.

K-2SO turns to Cassian. “Taraja calls you Cass. Should I call you Cass?”

Cassian laughs. “If you want to, I guess. I don’t really care.”

“She seems very frightened of me.” The droid turns back to her. “Do not be afraid, Taraja Ya’qul.”

“You told it our real names?” Taraja says, looking at Cassian.

“He’s fine, Tara.”

“Should I call you Tara?” The droid asks. “It’s much easier to say than your full name. I would also prefer it if you stopped looking at me like that. I am not going to attack you.”

“You’re forthcoming, I’ll give you that,” Taraja says.

Cassian frowns. “Yeah. I think it’s a side effect of the reprogramming. Wada mentioned it could happen.”

“Cassian, when I said we should get a pet, I didn’t mean a _droid_.”

“I am not a _pet_.”

“Kay,” Cassian says. He switches the stove off and turns to Taraja, crossing his arms. “He isn’t just for us. He’s for the Rebellion. I programmed him to be loyal to it, and not the Empire.”

Taraja eyes K-2SO. “You’re sure?”

“So far.”

“That isn’t reassuring, Cass.”

“Do you always argue so much?” K-2SO interjects. “It’s irritating. Cassian, your heart rate increased when you told me about Taraja, and I took that to mean you like her. Was that incorrect? Did you do something to my analytics?”

“You’re fine, Kay, believe me.”

“Is it going to live with us?” Taraja asks.

Cassian shrugs. “For now, I guess. He’ll mind himself though, won’t you, Kay?”

“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

Cassian smiles at Taraja. “You wanted a self-sufficient pet, didn’t you?”

“Not what I had in mind.”

“I am not a _pet_.”

Cassian laughs, and opens a cabinet, pulling out dishes. “Tara, go sit. Kay, could you help me with this?”

Cassian hears Taraja walk away, muttering something to herself in Mantooian, something she does when she has to get her thoughts out but doesn’t want Cassian to know what she’s saying. Cassian doesn’t really mind.

He feels light, and cheerful, far more serene than he has felt in months.

He likes K-2SO. The droid is nice to him, and eager to please, and invested in helping. He’s told it about the Rebellion, and his work, and the droid has expressed admiration and interest, and most importantly, a devoted loyalty to the cause.

(Cassian has no idea, but he has instilled in K-2SO a loyalty to more than just the Rebellion.)

(He’s instilled a loyalty to himself, as well.)

Cassian carries plates and forks to the table, with K-2SO shadowing him, carefully carrying the steaming pot of food that Cassian and Taraja will eat.

Taraja eyes K-2SO as he moves, but says nothing.

She does roll her eyes at Cassian.

Cassian sits down across from her, while K-2SO stations himself in the corner watching, hands clasped neatly together.

Cassian is twenty years old.

Taraja is twenty-two years old.

K-2SO is six years old.

(Cassian and K-2SO will both die in six years.)

(Taraja will die in eight months.)

(But none of them know that.)

Cassian and Taraja eat dinner, while K-2SO watches, interrupting to ask them questions, and to critique the food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is no canon info on where/when/how Cassian and K-2SO met, so this was what I came up with. K-2SO was canonically created in 12 BBY, so he would be 6 years old here (the year being 6 BBY, about 6 years away from ROGUE ONE.)
> 
> Alan Tudyk (who voices K-2SO) in a recent episode of THE NERDIST podcast, had some really nice things to say about the relationship between Cassian and K-2SO; Tudyk thought of it as a father/son one, which is probably fair, considering STAR WARS is so heavy on the paternal relationships, especially so in ROGUE ONE. (Although this story is ultimately arguing that Cassian [or, the one in this story] was more influenced/defined by the women he knew and loved; namely Serafima, Nerezza, Travia, Asori, and Taraja.) 
> 
> This story is taking a similar approach to that relationship between Cassian and K-2SO, but also suggesting that their relationship was much, much more complicated than the sparse interactions we saw in ROGUE ONE. (Which I have a lot to say about, and which will obviously be explored further in this story.)


	30. All The Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty years old, and once again on the precipice of an event that will change his life forever.

Cassian is twenty years old, and once again on the precipice of an event that will change his life forever.

K-2SO settles in with him and Taraja, despite Taraja’s skepticism and anxiety about the droid’s presence. The first few weeks are rough, wherein Taraja refuses to stand near K-2SO, choosing instead to always keep something in between them, including Cassian himself at times. She hovers nervously in the kitchen and bedroom, watching from a safe distance as Cassian sits with K-2SO, telling him about the Rebellion, and also about his work in Imperial Intelligence, passing information back to the rebels.

“That is _very_ dangerous,” K-2SO says. “The Empire will execute you if they catch you.”

“I know.”

“The Rebellion is lucky to have you, Cassian.”

It is not the first time someone has told Cassian this, but it still makes him smile.

Taraja watches this exchange from the couch, where she’s going over inventory reports for the Rebellion, and sighs.

She resolves to be kinder to K-2SO from then on, and follows through.

She brings K-2SO to the new rebel base one day, an abandoned hangar way down on Level 1397 of the Coruscant Underworld. The rebels all balk at the sight of her, what with a menacing and tall Imperial droid walking behind her, the Imperial crest on its gray shoulders, and Taraja has to talk multiple rebels down from shooting K-2SO on the spot.

She takes K-2SO along on a raid of an Imperial compound, where he proceeds to carry 200-pound boxes stuffed full of blasters out of the burning and tattered remains of the building, neatly piling them inside the rebel transports waiting outside.

The Coruscant Rebellion warms to him after that, as does Taraja.

It is not uncommon for Cassian to come back to the apartment after a day in Imperial Intelligence to find K-2SO and Taraja hanging out. He finds them talking, Taraja telling K-2SO about herself and her childhood on Mantooine, with K-2SO asking questions and seemingly taking notes, his eyes flickering. He finds them cooking, with Taraja instructing K-2SO to use his height to their advantage, reaching into the back of cupboards she can’t reach or stretching to open the conservator when her hands are full. He finds them fixing various pieces of technology for the Rebellion, including blasters and other weapons, with K-2SO delightedly, and without hesitation, having an opinion on absolutely everything his hands touch.

Cassian and Taraja have discovered that K-2SO has an incredibly strong and brusque mind, and is quite comfortable in sharing his opinions candidly, without censorship. Cassian knows this is better than the alternative--a droid that hides things from them would be dangerous--but still finds K-2SO’s inherent honesty, that juxtaposes itself with a bizarre sense of superiority, to be a little exhausting.

“He’s like a _child_ ,” Taraja complains one morning, tying up her boots with more aggression than strictly necessary, Cassian patiently listening from where he’s shaving in the refresher. “He’s rude, and he’s obnoxious, and you and I are certainly not equipped to handle anything like a child--”

She cuts herself off, frowning, and Cassian catches her eye in the mirror.

“He’s also trying,” he points out. “And he’s helping the Rebellion, and us.”

“But he doesn’t have to be so _difficult_.”

“You like him,” Cassian says, smiling.

Taraja rolls her eyes. “I only like him because he so clearly _loves_ you. And I do too, so. What Kay and I have is an _understanding_.”

Cassian snorts. He remembers everything that Wada ever told him about droids, and programming, and so Cassian does not believe droids are capable of love, or affection.

He says as much to Taraja, and she narrows her eyes.

“Nuh uh. No way. That droid _loves_ you, Cass.”

Cassian smirks a little. He doesn’t believe her.

(He’s wrong. Taraja is right. K-2SO has known Cassian for eight months, but he already loves him, and will only grow to love him more.)

Cassian chooses to let the subject go, shrugging his shoulders.

He finishes shaving and pauses for a moment, looking at his face in the mirror. The bruises and black eye from Ethan’s attack on him have faded completely, but he thinks his nose will always be a little crooked.

He thinks he looks like his father, with his short, military-grade haircut. Gabriel always preferred to keep his hair short, though he did it by choice, and not to follow any sort of requirement. The freshly crooked nose also heightens Cassian’s resemblance to Gabriel; Gabriel was in numerous fights, and had his nose broken more than once.

But Cassian definitely has his mother’s dark eyes, and her prominent cheekbones.

He runs a hand over his newly shaved face, and wonders what he’d look like if he could let the hair on his head and face grow out. He wonders what he’d look like with a beard and moustache; he’s never gotten an opportunity to see it. The Imperial Military forbids facial hair, and Cassian enlisted at the Academy when he was fifteen.

Cassian thinks he can remember Gabriel with a beard, but his father’s face is somewhat blurry in his mind now, and he doesn’t like to linger on him for long.

(He feels guilty whenever he thinks of Gabriel, because Cassian spent most of his six years with him feeling mostly confused at his father’s actions, and failing to understand him.)

(Cassian is twenty years old, and understands his father more clearly than he thinks he might like to.)

Cassian looks away from his face in the mirror, leaving the refresher and joining Taraja in sitting on the bed.

“Where are you going today?” He asks.

Taraja huffs. “No idea. Kolya just told me to meet him at base.”

“Are you taking Kay-Tu with you?”

“Definitely. He goes through our stuff when we’re not here, I swear. Why, did you want to take him with you?”

“To Imperial Intelligence?” Cassian laughs.

He knows he should be glad that K-2SO is so overwhelmingly honest and concise, but walking him into an Imperial stronghold would result in calamity. He’d be obviously uncomfortable, this soon after his reprogramming, and he’d very likely be unable to stop staring at the Imperial KX-series droids. He’d give himself away in minutes.

Taraja smiles and gets to her feet, going to the closet and pulling out the gray-purple scarf. It’s more gray than purple now, having been exposed to too many clouds of smoke and ash, and is a little frayed at the edges, and stained with blood in a few spots. But Taraja still wears it almost everyday, and Cassian is fairly sure part of why she does it is because she knows how happy it makes Cassian to see her wearing it.

She wraps the scarf around her head and shoulders, looking at herself in a mirror as she does. “You have that thing tonight, right?”

Cassian groans, letting himself fall back on the bed, closing his eyes.

There’s a performance of a new opera at the Galactic Opera House tonight, and Cassian has been invited by his supervisor, Captain Zane, to attend, which basically means it’s mandatory. He doesn’t know much about it, or who all will be there; he’s hoping Zane will introduce him to higher-ups in the Empire, so Cassian can have new contacts and hopefully learn information on Imperial movements he and the Rebellion don’t know about.

Cassian has never seen opera live before, but he has a feeling he isn’t going to like it, if only because being in a dark, crowded space, surrounded on all sides by Imperial officers and wealthy theater-goers who very likely sympathize with the Empire, sounds like his worst nightmare.

He turns his head, letting his eyes fall on his gray Imperial officer’s uniform, hanging on the closet door.

He’s worn it almost everyday for almost two years now, but he’s still not used to it. He still gets a chill whenever he catches a glimpse of himself in it, and still feels a deep sense of shame at just seeing it hanging in the closet. The uniform represents everything Cassian despises about the Empire; its grandstanding, its superiority, its conformity, and its autocratic, tyrannical nature. Cassian associates nothing good with the gray Imperial officer’s uniform, and putting it on almost everyday, as he does, has been chipping away at his spirit and sense of identity for years.

Taraja must see his melancholy for she moves, lying down next to Cassian and blocking his view of the gray uniform. She has a sad look on her face as she reaches out, brushing his thin, short hair. He looks at her.

“You okay?” She asks.

“I’m fine,” Cassian says.

This does not convince Taraja. She frowns, her lips twisting.

“I know how hard it is for you, to do the work you do,” she says slowly, choosing her words carefully. “To put on that uniform, and to walk around outside wearing it, knowing everyone sees you, and knowing that they think it’s what you stand for. Knowing that any rebels who saw you wearing it would assume the worst of you, since barely any of them know why you’re wearing it.”

Cassian blinks, looking away, as her fingers comb through his hair. He does agree with her that one of the worst things about wearing the uniform is doing so with the knowledge that, should any rebel see him wearing it, they’d likely kill him without pausing to confront him. The only ones who are aware of the nature of his undercover work are Taraja, Asori, Lexis, and the handful of Academy students and instructors Cassian has managed to recruit over the years.

And Ethan, but he isn’t a rebel anymore.

It isn’t a lot of people at all, not when put next to the number of Coruscant rebels. But Asori feels it best that Cassian keep his work close to his chest, like he does his real name, should someone who knows about Joreth Sward be caught and interrogated by the Empire.

“I think very highly of you, for doing it,” Taraja says. “It’s a selfless thing.”

“Selfless,” Cassian repeats, still not meeting her eyes.

“You throw yourself away to do the work. And you do it without complaint. It’s selfless.” She smiles at him, turning her head to look at him better. “You’re a good man, Cassian.”

“If you say so.”

She sighs, shaking her head. “I hope one day you’ll believe me. And I hope I’ll be there to see it.”

Cassian doesn’t like where she might be going with this, and he looks up, narrowing his eyes. “Where else would you be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Kay confesses his love to you, and you--”

“ _Stop_ ,” Cassian says, laughing now. He tugs her over to him, kissing her as she laughs.

* * *

The Galactic Opera House is, to put it mildly, splashy. The building itself is huge, encompassing several city blocks in the upper level of the Uscru District. There are two ornate entrances, decorated with brilliant marble columns and expensive Imperial artwork, leading to tall steps draped in red carpets leading to the interior of the building. The actual performing stage is circular, surrounded on all sides by box seats.

The whole thing reeks of wealth and ostentatiousness, and Cassian hates it.

He lingers at Zane’s side, mingling among the crowds in the halls before the performance, shaking hands with Imperial officer after Imperial officer. There are also commanders, and lower soldiers, and then the rest of the audience is made up of remarkably rich Coruscantians, who greet each other with familiar smiles and press kisses to each other’s cheeks in welcome. There’s an air of informality among the glamour; these people all run in the same rich circles and have known one another for years.

Cassian, as he anticipated, is incredibly uncomfortable.

But Zane is introducing him to a whole host of Imperial officers and rich sympathizers, and there’s always a chance Cassian will find a new mark to convert to the Rebellion, or find someone whose loyalty to the Empire is shaky at worst, indifferent at best.

Cassian commits the faces and names to memory, particularly the people who invite him to contact them for a more friendly meet-up.

He’s shaken about the fiftieth hand when Zane grabs his arm, an uncharacteristically unprofessional move. Cassian turns, and sees Zane’s wide eyes, and startled face.

“Sward, it’s the _Emperor_.”

And Cassian turns, following Zane’s gaze.

An old, hunched over man, dressed in a flowing purple cloak, is hobbling his way through the crowds, surrounded on all sides by tall men in red armored robes. Cassian cannot see the man’s face; only his pale hands, clutching the edges of his cloak, thick blue veins sticking out over his knuckles. But he’d recognize the man anywhere. It is, undoubtedly, the Emperor.

Cassian is filled at once by a rush of loathing and apprehension.

The man represents the Empire, is its figurehead, its central commander. He engineered the fall of the Republic (in ways that Cassian can readily admit he doesn’t fully know or understand) and spent his political career as a senator, rising through the ranks until he became Supreme Chancellor, a position he then used to transition the democratic republic into a fascist state.

Cassian can blame this man for the way his life has played out. He can blame him for the deaths of his family, his friends, his mentors. He can blame the Emperor for branding Cassian as a criminal, a thief, a spy. Without the Emperor, Cassian would likely still be on Fest, and his family would still be alive, and his life would be very, very different.

He watches, as does the rest of the rapt crowd, as the Emperor glides down the hall and enters his private box.

“Mother of Kwath,” Zane murmurs. “What a treat that was. I don’t remember the last time the Emperor attended an opera performance. Marvelous.”

“Indeed, sir,” Cassian says, voice soft.

It’s an opportunity. An amazing, once in a lifetime, opportunity.

Cassian wonders if he can possibly take it.

He thinks, as he follows Zane to their seats. He thinks, staring out over the grandiose stage far below, as Zane speaks to the others in their box. He thinks, as the lights go down and the performance begins.

Cassian would love nothing more than to see the Emperor dead. He isn’t sure that killing the Emperor would be enough to cause the fall of the Empire entirely, but it would be an incredible blow, one the Empire might not recover from, or at least, would result in the Empire being less than what they were originally.

(The Empire will fall in eleven years. The Emperor will die in ten years.)

Cassian can see the Emperor’s box from where he’s sitting, and he stares at it, as if he could kill the Emperor with his mind alone. How desperately he wishes he could.

(The Emperor will outlive Cassian Andor, but only by four years.)

He’s so lost in thought, and the performance is so loud, that he misses the soft, tell-tale clicking and beeping of a hundred detonators.

In the next heartbeat, the arena is filled with gray, acidic smoke.

The entire street block shakes, as bomb blasts, on the floor level, take out the beams and supports keeping the building standing. Explosions send dirt and concrete flying fifty meters into the air, knocking out numerous boxes lining the walls of the arena, sending their patrons screaming to the far-away floor below. Showers of sparks and flame erupt across the floor and sides of the arena, as the entire building groans, and threatens imminent collapse.

Cassian stares in shock and amazement, before years of Imperial Military training, and years of experience in multiple war zones, kicks in.

He seizes Zane’s arm, dragging him to his feet.

The roof begins to cave in, as the entire opera house buckles, straining with the loss of the floor below. A pit has opened up, revealing the thousands and thousands of levels that make up the Coruscant Underworld, and already people and furniture and bits of stage, columns, art, and building supports, have started plummeting down.

“Go, go, go,” Cassian yells, and the wealthy and horrified patrons in the box with him gather their wits and flee, Cassian following, dragging an utterly nonplussed Zane along with him.

They step out of the box and into the hall, just as the box falls apart behind them, tumbling down to the ground, hundreds of meters below.

In the hallway, Cassian grabs Zane by the shoulders, and shakes him roughly.

“Orders, sir?” He demands.

Zane’s eyes are wild. He’s clearly in a state of shock, and Cassian wonders if this is an Imperial officer who has somehow managed to escape actual battle.

“Evacuation it is, then,” Cassian mutters, recalling his Academy training. He pushes Zane in front of him, directing the Captain into following the throng of panicked and screaming theatergoers to the exits.

But as Cassian moves, the surreality and strangeness of the situation finally hits him.

The floor of the Galactic Opera House wouldn’t just _give out_. And it didn’t; it was blown out, by a series of explosions, set off remotely. And the Empire wouldn’t schedule a demolition in mid-performance so late at night, especially not with the Emperor in attendance--

Finally, Cassian realizes what has happened.

The Coruscant Rebellion has bombed the Galactic Opera House.

Likely because a rebel found out the Emperor was inside.

Cassian doesn’t know who found out--he didn’t tell them, he didn’t have an opportunity to send a message, to alert the Rebellion--but he thinks it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that, likely, there are rebels converging on the building, crawling out from the Underworld below.

He has to do something. He has to help them, somehow.

They have a chance to kill the Emperor.

He lets Zane slide from his grip, leaving himself standing still in a sea of people running for the streets outside, the air split by emergency sirens, alarms, and more distantly, blaster fire.

The rebels are here.

Cassian turns around, and runs back into the halls of the opera house.

The building is still trembling, settling and breaking, and he has to dodge errant ceiling tiles and art pieces as they’re knocked from the walls. The rich red carpets are stained in ash and rubble, and smoke still billows through the corridors. Doors have been knocked ajar from the force of people fleeing through them, and Cassian can hear screaming and yelling from theatergoers who have been trapped in blocked pathways or under collapsed walls and ceilings.

Cassian finds a staircase, and begins to make his way down, to the ground.

He makes it about forty floors down, nowhere near the ground floor, but finds his path irrevocably blocked. A swath of gray concrete has mangled the stairs below, and he can go no further. Cassian pushes the exit door open, emerging into another hallway.

The seats this far down are more expensive, closer to the stage, but there isn’t a patron in sight to confirm this. It is, in fact, shockingly quiet, save for the groaning of the building and the snaps and hisses of frayed electrical wiring that has been forced out of the ceiling. The rich carpet is covered in gray footprints, tens of them, but Cassian doesn’t see anyone.

Still, he pulls out his Imperial blaster, and walks as quietly over the rubble and mess as he can.

He doesn’t make it very far, when he hears an ear-splitting roar. He turns, and immediately throws himself down to the floor, barely escaping the bright red blaster fire that sails just over his head.

There is very little cover, so Cassian scrambles, crawling to the side of the hallway, crouching behind an ornate marble statue. He can hear the statue’s base cracking as it takes the blaster fire intended for Cassian, and he peers out around it, trying to see who’s shooting at him and where the roaring is coming from.

He sees a flash of brown fur, and scaly gray skin, and a hint of purple-gray--

“WAIT! Wait, _wait_ , stop, Tully! Kolya! That’s _Cassian!_ ”

The blaster fire stops, followed by a shorter, quieter roar. Cassian gets up in time to see Taraja’s relieved face before she throws herself at him.

“Kriff, Cass,” she says, gasping a little, hugging him tightly. He returns the hug as best as he can, as lost as he is. Over her shoulder he spots the only other living members of her old Mantooine team, Kolya, the short, brown-furred Bothan, and Tully, the seven foot tall Barabel with scaly gray skin and the one responsible for the roaring.

Both Kolya and Tully are staring at Cassian in open amazement, and scornful judgment.

Cassian is visited, once again, by the reminder that he’s wearing a gray Imperial officer’s uniform, and that hardly anyone in the Rebellion knows about his work.

“I’m so glad to see you,” Taraja says, her smile wide and blue eyes warm. “I was so scared that you’d get caught up in the blasts--”

Tully growls something, and Kolya shakes his head, muttering, “Yes, it _is_ Taraja’s Cassian, but I don’t know what he’s doing here or why he looks like that--”

“--And you had no idea we were coming, and you could’ve gotten killed, almost did, by us,” Taraja continues, ignoring her teammates.

“Taraja, what the hell is going on?” Cassian demands.

“The Emperor is _here_ ,” Taraja says, eyes shining. “Kolya, he heard rumors, but he got a confirmation late last night. He helped plan a bombing and a raid, and that was what he needed me for, you remember me mentioning that this morning?”

Vaguely, Cassian does, but he also feels like his conversation with Taraja that morning had in fact happened several years ago.

“And there was no time to try to warn you, and no one else knew you were here, and so I told Asori but she thought that we should go ahead with it anyway,” Taraja continues. “She said you’d understand.”

“Of course,” Cassian says, and he really does.

He spent most of the performance trying to figure out how he could assassinate the Emperor himself, and came to the conclusion that it was not something he could do alone.

And Cassian has put the Rebellion before Taraja, by not warning her about the raid on the old hotel base last year, and he completely understands why she chose to put the Rebellion before him, too.

“How many are here, Tara?” He asks.

“A lot,” Taraja says. “Maybe five hundred of us. Most of them have gone to the Emperor’s box, to try to head him off. We’re down here to see if we could find anyone else, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to find _you!_ ”

Tully roars something, and Kolya nods.

“Taraja, can we trust him?” He asks, fur rippling as he looks at Cassian.

“Yes, of course,” Taraja says, spinning around to glare at Kolya, while still holding on to Cassian’s wrist. “Asori didn’t want anyone to know, but Cassian’s been working undercover in the Empire for five years.”

Kolya stares, while Tully’s scale-covered face breaks out into a slow grin, exposing rows and rows of sharp, thin teeth.

“We should get moving,” Taraja says, turning back to Cassian. “We don’t know how long we have.”

“They’re clearing out the building,” Cassian says. “But it won’t take long, and then they’ll send in a demolitions team to examine the building. They’ll be accompanied by deathtroopers.”

“You’d better come with us,” Taraja says. “Any rebel who sees you will shoot you on the spot.”

Tully grunts, and Kolya nods, muttering something back in a language Cassian doesn’t understand. He’s fairly sure he doesn’t want to know.

He joins Tully, Kolya, and Taraja in running down the hallway. They don’t come across anyone, and all it does to heighten Cassian’s anxiety. There’s a possibility that the Empire has finished evacuating the opera house, and that any second, Imperial operatives might be sent in to weed out any trespassers.

As it turns out, it is not the Empire that Cassian should be nervous about seeing.

Tully is about twenty feet ahead of Taraja and Cassian, her long legs propelling her through the collapsed bits of ceiling and rubble that litter the floor, her lengthy and sharp tail sweeping the debris out behind her for the others to follow. Kolya is further back, his legs much shorter and slower, and he’s turned, one eye focused on searching out any movement behind them.

There’s a shrill whistling noise, and then a wall to the side of Cassian and Taraja is blown out, knocking them off their feet and throwing them apart.

Cassian lands hard, gasping, as a cloud of smoke billows into the corridor. He looks up to see a wave of deathtroopers and stormtroopers step through the wall, firing with enthusiasm at a group of dark-clothed rebels, who come pouring into the corridor with them.

He can hear Tully roaring, and Kolya yelling, but he can neither hear nor see Taraja. He struggles to his feet, wiping his sleeve over his eyes, blinking, and then is knocked back by a blow to his chest.

He hits the wall and only gets a second to see a fist coming at his face. He dodges to the side, and the fist embeds itself in the plaster where his head was a second before.

It’s a man who’s attacking him, a man dressed in head-to-toe black, vibroblades in scabbards on either side of his hips. He is very clearly not an Imperial officer or stormtrooper or deathtrooper, and Cassian realizes he must be a rebel, one Cassian has not met or seen before, who saw Cassian and assumed he was the Imperial officer he’s dressed as.

“ _Wait_ \--” Cassian tries, but the man lets out a howl of rage, and it is all Cassian can do to dodge the man’s blows. He doesn’t want to hurt this man, this rebel, but he’s also aware that he’s in grave danger.

The man’s shoulder moves, and Cassian spots Taraja through the thick smoke. He sees her eyes widen, and she opens her mouth--

With a soft, sizzling pop, the man lights a vibroblade and sinks it into Cassian’s side.

Dimly, Cassian is aware of Taraja screaming, but all he can really grasp at that moment is a burning pain. His knees buckle, and he drops to the floor, his hands fumbling for the stab wound in his side, shock coursing through him.

He looks up, sees the man’s face, twisted with rage and hate, and Cassian thinks, _I am going to be killed by a rebel, and I am going to die wearing an Imperial officer’s uniform_.

It is unthinkable, and devastating, for someone who has been fighting the Empire as long as Cassian has.

And the man is spinning the vibroblade in his hand, and it’s painted dark red with Cassian’s own blood, and he’s turning the blade down to Cassian’s face.

Cassian looks away from the man, and finds Taraja in the chaos. He can tell she’s trying to reach him, trying to prevent the man from killing Cassian, but she’s been distracted by the blaster fire coming to her from the stormtroopers. He watches as she dives behind a small patch of gray ceiling, crouching and returning fire.

Cassian can feel his blood coating his hands, and he knows he is seconds away from death with the rebel standing above him, and all he wants is for Taraja to turn her head, so he can look at her face one last time.

He thinks it isn’t too much to ask.

But a shot from a blaster suddenly whips through the air, and hits the man above Cassian.

The man gasps, and falls, landing on his side. Cassian can only stare in shock at the man’s opened eyes, his slack-jawed expression, the blood weeping from the hole in the man’s chest.

Cassian forces himself to look away from the man, and he realizes that an Imperial officer has arrived with the stormtroopers and deathtroopers, and that the officer had seen Cassian about to die, come to the conclusion that a rebel was about to murder a fellow Imperial officer, and had acted accordingly.

Cassian gasps, entirely stunned at still being alive.

He’s still bleeding, but he forces himself to his feet, swaying, pressing both hands against the stab wound in his side.

The heat of the ignited vibroblade has semi-cauterized the wound, and it isn’t life-threatening; he can survive this.

Most of the rebels have fled further down the hall, taking the stormtroopers and deathtroopers with them. As the blaster light and yelling moves away from him, Cassian looks through the smoke and sees Taraja, staring at him with astonishment, still crouched on the ground.

“ _Cassian_.”

Cassian tears his eyes away from Taraja, following the voice, a voice he has heard so many times throughout his life, calling his name, reaching for him, singing a lullaby to him, chasing him around the backyard of their house on Fest, and lingering in Cassian’s dreams in the seven years since he last heard it.

A voice, belonging to a man who has haunted Cassian’s waking life.

He almost feels like he shouldn’t be surprised to see Zeferino.

Cassian has lost his officer’s cap in the battle, and he stands there, his hair cut short and dark brown eyes large in shock and pain. His big brother stands ten yards away, Imperial blaster half-raised, openly gawking at the sight of Cassian, in an Imperial officer’s uniform.

“Zeferino,” Cassian breathes, and he hears Taraja gasp in recognition at the name.

Zeferino moves instantaneously at the noise.

He raises his blaster at Taraja, and he fires.

His shot hits her in the same spot as his earlier shot hit the rebel who’d been about to kill Cassian.

She falls, silently, landing hard on her back.

“ _No_ ,” Cassian yells, and he is moving, flinging himself across rock and gravel, suddenly ignorant of the hole in his side, desperate to reach Taraja.

He slides to his knees next to her, where she’s gasping, her hands hovering over the hole in her chest, just over her heart, and he knows that’s where her heart is, because how many times has he laid his head on her chest and listened to it beat?

“Tara, Tara,” he calls, pulling his hands from his own injury to shove hers aside, pressing his hands to the shot in her chest, so he can try and stop her blood from gushing out of her body.

“C-Cass,” she stutters, her blue eyes wild, but managing to find him.

“It’s me, it’s me,” Cassian returns, leaning over her, as she draws a ragged and horrifyingly watery breath.

Cassian hears the soft crunch of gravel behind him, and he doesn’t even hesitate.

He picks up Taraja’s dropped blaster and turns.

He shoots his brother.

His shot lands in Zeferino’s thigh, and he only has time to see his brother’s stunned expression before he topples to the ground.

Cassian can spare no thought for Zeferino. He drops the blaster and returns his hand to his other one, pressing both of them urgently onto Taraja. Blood is bubbling through his fingers, spreading over his knuckles and hands, mingling with the stains from his own blood.

Taraja’s breath is coming in fast pants, and her face is twisting, her mouth wide open as she begins to whimper.

“Sssh, sssh,” Cassian says, keeping his eyes locked on her face, and his hands pressed to the blaster shot. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.”

He remembers Taraja crouching next to him in the shower, after he killed Sebastian a year ago, remembers her soft voice as she told him _You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay_.

He bites his lip, hard, to keep from screaming.

“Cass,” Taraja whispers.

“I’m here, I’m right here.”

“Cass, I-I think I’m d-dying.”

“No, you’re not,” Cassian says automatically, but his voice is shaking, and his vision is starting to blur, and, wildly, he thinks he might be the one who’s dying.

“Cass,” Taraja says again, and her hand moves, reaching for him.

And Cassian gives in.

He catches her hand, gripping it tightly, and presses it to his face.

Taraja gives him the closest thing she can to a smile, and Cassian finally realizes she’s going to die.

“Please, no,” he hears himself say.

“Cassian,” Taraja says. Her eyes are wide, but focused, locking in on Cassian’s face. “You h-have to keep going, okay?”

“I know.”

“Keep fighting,” she says. “Don’t stop. D-Don’t ever stop. Keep going.”

“All the way,” Cassian says, nodding, and he feels the words settle into him as a promise.

“Yeah,” Taraja says, her lips twisting back up into a smile. “T-That sounds good. I w-want…”

But what she wants, Cassian doesn’t hear. Her eyes slide close, and she trembles, twisting her lips together to keep from screaming, lost in the pain of bleeding out on the floor of the Galactic Opera House, as it shakes and burns around them.

Cassian drops his hand from the hole in her chest and moves closer to her, wrapping her in his arms as tightly as he can, knowing it doesn’t matter now.

The only thing left for him to do for her is to remind her that he’s there, that she’s loved, that he isn’t going to leave her now. It is the exact thing they’ve done for each other, repeatedly, in the three years since they met again on Coruscant.

He presses his face to the gray-purple scarf wrapped around her head, a scarf that is far more gray than it ever was purple, and he closes his eyes.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’m right here. You can go, Taraja. You’ve done enough.”

Because he thinks that’s what every rebel wants to hear at the hour of their death: the acknowledgment, the assurance, that they’ve done enough. That they’ve managed to injure the Empire some, that their death will have some meaning, that all their work has been worth it.

Cassian thinks he’ll want to hear this.

He wonders if there will be anyone there to say the words to him.

“It’s okay,” he says again, turning his head, and pressing his lips to her forehead. “I’ve got you. I won’t leave you.”

He spends the next few minutes listening to her harsh and jagged breathing, memorizing the sound of her haggard gasps, right up until the moment they stop.

Silence falls, save for the cracking of small fires from the battle around them, the groans of the building settling, and Cassian’s soft, even breathing.

“Okay,” he says, more to himself, than anything else.

He’s still alive.

Taraja was twenty-three years old.

Cassian is twenty years old.

He lets himself breathe for a moment, gives himself a minute to sit, holding Taraja to his chest, her blood staining his gray Imperial officer’s uniform.

And then he becomes aware of another noise: another person’s frantic breathing.

He remembers who shot Taraja.

Carefully, Cassian lays Taraja on the ground. Her eyes are closed, and her mouth parted, but her face looks almost peaceful, and Cassian wonders if he can find some comfort in that.

He stumbles to his feet, only then remembering the stab wound in his side.

He finds he doesn’t care about it.

He can’t really feel anything.

Cassian moves away from Taraja, picking his way over the rubble and debris, stepping over bodies of fallen stormtroopers and rebels. The corridor is dark, the hall lights flickering, and he mostly relies on the flickering light from the flames coming from the small fires around him for light. He is instantly reminded of the destroyed hallway of the Fest Rebellion base seven years ago, the last time he saw Zeferino.

He stops next to his brother now.

His brother sits on the floor, his hands wrapped around the blaster wound in his thigh, and he stares up at Cassian in pure astonishment. He’s wearing an Imperial officer’s uniform too, though his rank indicates he’s a Captain, to Cassian’s First Lieutenant.

Zeferino is twenty-four years old.

“Cassian,” Zeferino gasps. “Cassian… What are you doing here? You’re an Imperial officer?”

Cassian crouches down on the ground to better see Zeferino.

He looks at his brother, and he finds that they do look a lot alike after all.

Their brown hair is the same color and texture, styled in the same military-grade length, and they both have Gabriel’s thin mouth, have similar lines gathering near their eyes, and they’re both dressed in the gray Imperial officer’s uniform. If they were standing, they’d be within an inch of each other’s height.

“You were right, Zef,” Cassian says.

Zeferino frowns, turning his head, staring up at Cassian. “Right about what, Cassi?”

No one has called Cassian by his childhood nickname in a long time. He almost laughs, to hear it now.

“The last time we saw each other, on Fest, you told me to come find you when I was older,” says Cassian. “Because maybe then I wouldn’t see things in black and white anymore. I’d have a better understanding of good, and bad. You told me that you didn’t have to explain yourself to me then, and I see, now, that you’re right. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Zef. I understand you.”

“Okay,” says Zeferino, but his voice betrays his confusion.

“Do you remember the last thing you said to me, Zeferino? It was a question.”

Zeferino frowns, his eyes narrowing in thought. He shakes his head.

“You asked,” Cassian murmurs, “‘Are you no longer good, Cassi?’”

As he speaks, Cassian turns, reaching behind him for the Imperial pistol that Zeferino had dropped when Cassian shot him. The pistol is identical to the one Cassian carries, and he picks it up, turning it over in his blood-stained hands, blood that belonged to him, and blood that belonged to Taraja, and looks at his brother again.

Zeferino’s light brown eyes, Gabriel’s eyes, stare at him in horror.

“It’s something I’ve had a difficult time answering,” Cassian says. “But I have an answer, now. And I think it’s one you’ve suspected. You always did know me better than I know myself.”

“Cassian,” Zeferino whispers.

Cassian is twenty years old.

Cassian stares at his older brother. “I’m not good, Zeferino.”

And Cassian raises the pistol, and shoots Zeferino in the forehead.

It’s the shot that killed Nerezza, the one that Zeferino himself might’ve made.

Cassian didn’t ask.

He finds the answer wouldn’t matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Galactic Opera House is seen in REVENGE OF THE SITH, in that iconic "Tale of Darth Plagueis" scene.
> 
> There is no canon evidence of a bombing like this ever happening.


	31. The Fugue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian looks at his brother.
> 
> Zeferino is dead on the floor in front of him, light brown eyes still open and face forever frozen in a look of shock. One of his brother’s hands lays outstretched, because he’d been reaching for Cassian, to stop him or protect himself, when Cassian had killed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter begins immediately after the end of the last chapter.

Cassian looks at his brother.

Zeferino is dead on the floor in front of him, light brown eyes still open and face forever frozen in a look of shock. One of his brother’s hands lays outstretched, because he’d been reaching for Cassian, to stop him or protect himself, when Cassian had killed him.

He lies in a position quite similar to the one Serafima died in: broken, and looking at Cassian.

But Cassian cannot let himself think of his mother, or his brother, and so he gets to his feet.

His side aches, but it is a distant, barely distracting ache. It’s enough that Cassian only knows that it’s there, that he did get stabbed, that he needs medical attention. He finds he can barely bring himself to even acknowledge that much. He knows that it’s adrenaline really keeping him going. His hands are shaking, and he knows he’s only about a minute away from completely falling apart.

He picks up Zeferino’s Imperial blaster, and puts it into his holster. He goes back to the spot he was stabbed and takes the vibroblade, just in case.

He walks back to Taraja. She’s exactly where he left her, eyes closed, arms resting along her sides, a ragged hole in her chest encrusted with dried blood.

He looks at her, and thinks, _What am I going to do?_

They’re stuck inside the Galactic Opera House, and it’s poised to collapse at any moment, or to be completely overrun with stormtroopers and deathtroopers. Cassian should leave immediately. He should get out of the building, and try to contact Zane, or go to a medical center to get the stab wound in his side checked, or go straight to the building Joreth Sward works in and report for duty.

But he just can’t. He can’t leave Taraja here.

He knows he wouldn’t be leaving her, really, that she’s dead and all that he’s standing next to is her corpse. He knows that if she knew he was struggling with what to do next that she’d be furious, that she’d tell him to get himself out of the building while he can, to avoid any awkward questions.

But he looks at her body, at her thin face, and he finds that the thought of leaving her in this Imperial building, this symbol of Imperial strength, is unbearable.

She deserves better. She deserves so much better than what she got.

Maybe all she has left is Cassian, and he’ll do what he can for her.

He gathers himself together, crouches down, and carefully pulls Taraja’s frame across his shoulders.

He’s able to stand, but his side explodes in a splitting pain. Cassian grits his teeth and closes his eyes for a moment, coaching himself through the burning hurt, reminding himself of who he’s carrying, gathering all his military training in order to steel himself into completing this incredibly important job of carrying Taraja out of the opera house.

He begins to walk.

Taraja isn’t heavy, not really, and he’s picked her up before, but always to make her laugh. She isn’t laughing now, isn’t breathing, and carrying her now is the hardest thing Cassian has ever done. The stab wound in his side would already trouble him enough, but coupled with the weight of _Taraja_ across his shoulders, Cassian is sure he won’t be able to make it.

He’s convinced that this will be the longest, most painful journey of his life.

(It isn’t.)

 _Keep going, keep going, you made a promise_ , he thinks to himself, staring at the ground, putting one foot in front of the other. The floor is still covered in debris, bits of ceiling and pieces of expensive art, making everywhere Cassian steps a treacherous decision. He pictures himself stumbling, pictures Taraja falling, and hears himself whimper.

He has to keep going. He has to.

He’s so focused in moving that he almost misses the mechanical whirring of an approaching droid.

Cassian looks up, expecting to encounter an Imperial droid whose question of why he’s carrying a dead rebel he won’t be able to answer.

“Cassian?”

He’s impressed that he still has it in him to be shocked at anything, after the way events have unfolded in the last hour, but he’s still stunned at the voice, and realizes he’s looking at K-2SO, who Taraja must have brought with her and gotten separated from in the commotion.

“Kay,” Cassian gasps. “Kriff, I’m glad to see you.”

He’s reminded of Taraja saying the same words to him earlier, and shakes his head.

“Come here,” he says, sharply.

K-2SO moves obediently to Cassian’s side, and holds his arms out for Cassian to carefully pass Taraja into them. Her head lulls to the side, leaning against K-2SO’s gray chest, and the droid stares down at her.

“ _Oh_ ,” he says, sounding as surprised as he did when Cassian turned him back on that first time.

“Yes,” Cassian confirms. “Let’s go.”

In a tender move, K-2SO pulls Taraja close, like he’s cradling her.

“Cassian, I am--”

“Please, not now,” Cassian snaps, looking away. “And don’t call me that name, not down here.”

If K-2SO finds these orders confusing, he doesn’t show it. He follows Cassian through the destroyed hallways, and to a side stairwell. Cassian tugs the door open and moves inside, gripping the handrails tightly to keep himself moving, pulling himself forward. He can hear K-2SO’s loud clanking steps behind him, but he doesn’t dare look back.

He climbs. He thinks it will be the hardest, most painful climb of his life.

(It isn’t.)

He somehow makes it up tens of flights of stairs, largely through sheer will and adrenaline alone. They emerge through a door into an alley on the side of the opera house, and even in the dark Cassian can see flashing lights of emergency transports, and crowds of people, audience members dressed in ripped and ash-covered refinery, and passersby in plain civilian clothes, all loitering at both ends of the alley.

Cassian turns back to K-2SO, but keeps his gaze high, looking only at the droid’s head.

“This way,” he says.

They have no way of walking out of this alley, not without attracting attention and Cassian knows there’s no way he and K-2SO can explain why they have Taraja’s body. Cassian walks instead to the grate set in the ground, and pulls out the vibroblade. He notices that his blood still stains the handle and blade, but it doesn’t give him pause. He turns the blade on, watches it light up in neon, blisteringly hot red, and then uses it to cut through the grate.

He slides in, dropping four feet to land in ankle-deep, frigid, gray water. He looks back up at K-2SO, and holds out his arms.

“Carefully,” he says.

He doesn’t know how they quite manage it, considering how ungainly K-2SO can be, but they are able to navigate Taraja into Cassian’s waiting arms. He staggers, but keeps his footing, and steps aside so K-2SO can jump down.

Cassian realizes he’s currently standing in a pipe, with Taraja, and it instantly reminds him of the very first time they met, as children in a pipe on Mantooine.

He closes his eyes for a moment, opening them when K-2SO drops down next to him with a splash. He passes Taraja back to the droid, and turns the vibroblade on again, using its red-hot blade for light.

He leads them through the pipe.

They walk through the pipe for half an hour, until Cassian is sure they’re far away enough from the opera house to not attract attention. They find a maintenance door, and Cassian uses the vibroblade to get it open. They walk through a short series of empty rooms, until they find the door to the outside.

It is easier after that to find an elevator that will take them to the Underworld.

Cassian is thankful for the lateness of the hour, that they do not run into anyone on the street as they walk back to the apartment.

He still doesn’t fully breathe until he’s closed the door of the apartment behind them.

He collapses to his knees.

He can hear K-2SO moving around him, carrying Taraja into their bedroom, but he cannot look.

Cassian lets himself fall forward, the pain, blood loss, and grief overwhelming him, and passes out.

* * *

Cassian goes to see Asori the next day.

He doesn’t meet her in her office. Rather, he sends her a message, asking her to meet him in one of Coruscant’s surface parks, the very same one where they had their first planning session prior to Cassian entering the Royal Imperial Academy.

He waits on a bench until he sees Asori approaching him. He gets to his feet, and hugs her before saying anything.

As it turns out, that gesture says it all.

“You’re leaving,” Asori says.

They’ve broken apart, and are sitting next to each other on the bench. The park around them is green, and lush, and filled with families complete with little children, couples holding hands and walking, and young people playing borgleball.

Cassian turns away from this scene to look at Asori.

“Taraja is dead,” Cassian says. “I’m taking her body back to Mantooine, to give her some peace.”

He knows there might not be a point to this gesture, not really. But Taraja loved Mantooine, and it’s where her dead family lives, the hot planet of sand and desert that she grew up on. He thinks she’d prefer to be laid to rest there, than anywhere on Coruscant, with its coldness, its dark buildings, and Underworld.

He can do that much for her.

“But you aren’t coming back to Coruscant after.”

This throws Cassian somewhat. He frowns. “Why wouldn’t I come back?”

“Because you don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do,” Cassian says. “I still have plenty of work to do. I have my job in Imperial Intelligence, I have Joreth Sward--”

“--Joreth Sward, who is believed to have died in the Galactic Opera House,” Asori says. “Or did you not see that report?”

“I did, but I’ll go to work tomorrow and clear it up. I’ve got the scar from a vibroblade to back-up my story.”

K-2SO had managed to peel an unconscious Cassian off the floor of the apartment’s front room, had tugged up Cassian’s shirt to reach the bloody vibroblade wound in his side, and had carefully patched it up. It’s been about twelve hours since that moment, and Cassian’s side still aches, and he’s still a little woozy from the blood loss, and he’ll always have the scar.

“A vibro--” Asori cuts herself off, shaking her head. “Sure. But, Cassian… You don’t _have_ to tell the Empire that Joreth Sward survived. Maybe he didn’t.”

“But I did--”

“But you aren’t Joreth Sward.”

That gives Cassian pause. He looks down at his hands, clasped in his lap. It’s such a simple statement, _You aren’t Joreth Sward_ , but it’s one Cassian has a hard time remembering. He’s been playing Joreth Sward for almost six years now, has spent more hours in those years as Joreth Sward rather than Cassian Andor, to the point that Cassian Andor sometimes feels like the fake identity.

It was Wada, and Taraja, who always reminded him of who he was supposed to be.

“I’m not sure I know who I am anymore,” Cassian says quietly.

He sees Zeferino’s huge and horrified brown eyes, hears the shot from the blaster, sees the hole open up in his brother’s forehead.

 _I’m not good, Zeferino_.

Asori reaches out and takes one of Cassian’s hands in hers. He looks at her, and her hazel eyes are warm.

“Maybe you take some time, and find out,” she says.

“I can’t, though,” Cassian says. “I have so much work to do here, I can’t just walk away from everything I’ve spent the last five years working on. What was the point of it, then?”

“The _point?_ ” Asori laughs. “Cassian, you brought dozens of people into the Rebellion. Well-connected, former Imperial-supporting people. You’ve shared hundreds of Imperial secrets with us. You’ve mapped out Imperial buildings across Coruscant. At your job, you snuck in fake intelligence to protect the rebels of Coruscant, and you helped guide new policy that’ll make things easier for people in the Outer Rim. You taught numerous rebels how to fight, and other life skills they’ll need to survive. And you’ve inspired hundreds more, and will continue to do so. _That_ was the point of it, Cassian. The information was incredibly valuable, but the hope? Maybe more so.”

“Hope,” Cassian repeats.

“Hope is everything,” Asori says. “Hope is what got me through the years before I found the Rebellion.” She smiles at Cassian. “Hope is what will keep you going too, I expect.”

Cassian considers this. He thinks of Gabriel’s Insurrectionist Cell on Fest, the small group of soldiers he found and mentored, and how the Insurrectionist Cell grew to become the Fest Rebellion, led by Travia Chan and Sids Kon. He considers the Cell, and the Fest Rebellion, and compares them to the Coruscant Rebellion, led now by Asori Joshi. He thinks of how none of them would’ve survived without a gutsy leader, and soldiers with messages of resilience and idealism.

He wonders if he’s lost his idealism.

He wonders if it’s possible to find it again.

Asori watches his face, and she must see the resolution he’s come to, for she nods.

“I accept your resignation,” she says, voice gentle. “Do you know where you’ll go after Mantooine?”

“Not yet,” says Cassian, which is the truth.

Asori nods. Then her expression changes, the quiet acceptance turning to sorrow. “I’m sorry about Taraja.”

“Thank you.”

“She loved you.”

“I know,” says Cassian, who is unsure as to why Asori is telling him this.

“It’s important that you don’t forget that,” she says. “It’s easy to, in this war. To forget the nice things. But those are the things we need to keep going.”

Cassian looks at Asori, and is struck by the realization that for all the years he’s known her, the hours and hours of conversation he’s had with her, that he doesn’t really know her all that well. He knows the bare details of her life before the Rebellion, and he knows her life in the war now. He doesn’t know much about her life outside it.

He wonders if she has one.

He wonders if he’ll ever have one.

“Thank you, Asori,” he says. “For everything. You’ve built something incredible here, on Coruscant.”

Asori smiles widely at the praise. “I could not have done it without you, my friend.”

They stand, and Cassian extends his hand for one last handshake. Asori smiles, accepting it.

“Until we meet again,” Cassian says.

Asori raises an eyebrow. “You think we will?”

Cassian shrugs. “Maybe. I have hope.”

(Cassian’s hope is not misplaced. It never is. He will see Asori again.)

“I have hope, too,” Asori says. “Good luck, Cassian Andor.”

“You, too, Asori Joshi,” Cassian says. He gives her one last smile and then turns, walking away.

* * *

Cassian begins to pack up his home, for the third time in his twenty years of life.

He packs up his clothes, his shoes, and his weapons. He packs up his handful of personal items; the holograms of Serafima and Wada, a book with assorted mementos pressed inside including the flowers from Garqi he picked as a child, Nerezza’s blue scarf, Gabriel’s dagger, and an old piece of Serafima’s pottery.

He doesn’t pack his Imperial officer’s uniforms. He has no plans to, and no interest in, ever wearing one again.

(He will.)

Everything fits in three bags. He looks at it all, and then turns to the rest of the things in the apartment, which belonged to Taraja.

He deliberates, and then he calls Casher, one of his first Coruscant Rebellion friends, to take everything.

“You sure you don’t want any of this?” Casher asks, boxing up dishes, to take with him back to the base, to be used by any rebel who needs them. K-2SO stands over his shoulder, helping, and boxing up blankets, but moving slowly so as to hear Cassian’s response.

“I’m sure,” he says.

“Just…” Casher frowns. “A lot of this was Taraja’s, right? And you don’t want to hold onto it?”

“She doesn’t have any living family on Mantooine,” says Cassian. “Or on Coruscant.”

Tully and Kolya had also died in the Galactic Opera House, though they’d likely died not knowing Taraja was gone too.

“I mean, for _you_ though,” says Casher. “You don’t want to keep any of her stuff?”

“Do you think I should?”

“Force, man, I have no idea,” says Casher. “I don’t have anything from Anaxes; it was destroyed without any warning. But I… I kinda wish I had _something_. Even if it was just one thing.”

Cassian considers this. He half-glances back to the stripped bedroom, where Taraja’s body has been placed in an airtight box.

He turns back around, and surveys the boxes of her things, and knows what he’s going to take.

Just one thing.

The scarf is all gray now, and tattered, and stained in places, but it was the scarf Cassian brought for her from Corellia, the purple-gray one she adored and wore everywhere, and Cassian cannot count how many times he’d spot her in a crowd, walking towards him, smiling with that scarf wrapped around her head and shoulders.

Cassian takes the scarf and carefully wraps it around his own shoulders.

Casher doesn’t comment. He loads the rest of the boxes into his ship, and then reaches for Cassian’s bags too.

“What are you doing?” Cassian asks.

“You’re giving me a lift back to base,” Casher says. “And then you’re taking this ship.” He looks up, and meets Cassian’s stunned gaze. “Asori’s orders.”

The ship is an Allanar N3 light freighter, with forward-facing laser cannons and a medium-sized cargo bay. The ship is more frequently used by the Empire, but Cassian isn’t surprised that the Coruscant Rebellion has managed to get their hands on one. He is surprised, and deeply touched, that Asori is giving it to him now.

He flies Casher to the base, and helps him unload Taraja’s things, and everything else from the apartment.

He is sad, but still detached from it all.

He’s quite sure Taraja’s death has not sunk in yet, and he’s terrified of what he will become when it does.

Once everything has been unloaded, Cassian looks around his new ship, and finds K-2SO, already strapped into the co-pilot’s chair.

“Kay, you can stay here,” Cassian says softly. “The Coruscant Rebellion would love to have you.”

K-2SO’s head swivels around, and he peers at Cassian.

“Taraja said I should go wherever you go.”

Cassian freezes. “What?”

“She took me with her to the opera house,” says K-2SO. “And she told me that if we got separated that I was to go back to the apartment and wait for her there. She said that if she didn’t come back, but you did, that I should follow you, and go wherever you go. That’s what she _said_.”

He sounds insistent, and a little agitated, and Cassian remembers how tenderly K-2SO carried Taraja’s body, and he realizes he isn’t the only one mourning her.

“She’d understand if you wanted to stay, though,” Cassian says.

“But I don’t _want_ to,” K-2SO says. “I want to go with you, Cassian.”

Cassian studies K-2SO. He thinks of how he picked him because he just happened to be in the Imperial hangar that day, three months after Cassian had killed Sebastian, when he was feeling hopeless and lost. He picked K-2SO because he wanted to do something good for a change, to make someone better.

He thinks now that, maybe, K-2SO can make him better, too.

 _Maybe droids_ can _be good_ , he wonders in awe.

He keeps his thoughts to himself though, and nods, sliding into the pilot’s chair.

He and K-2SO take off, flying together for the first time.

(But not the last time. Nowhere near the last time.)

Coruscant is a mess of brilliant light and flickering color below, but Cassian barely acknowledges it. He keeps his gaze down, his focus on flying this new and unfamiliar ship, K-2SO moving similarly at his side.

He knows that if he were to look out the window, he wouldn’t see home.

Home is in an airtight box in the cargo hold.

Home is in pieces in the air around a Port on Coruscant.

Home is buried in the frigid earth of Fest.

Cassian keeps his eyes locked on the stars.

* * *

Cassian finally realizes that Taraja is gone on his twenty-first birthday.

He and K-2SO are in deep space, flying towards Mantooine. They’ve been traveling for a few days, and are just a day or two away from reaching the Atrivis Sector, when Cassian walks into the cockpit one morning to be greeted with a “Happy birthday” from K-2SO.

“It isn’t my birthday,” says Cassian.

“Yes, it is,” says K-2SO, and he taps his finger against the stardate projected from the ship’s computer. “Taraja told me when your birthday was. I would not forget. Did she lie?”

Cassian stares at the stardate. It _is_ his birthday, but it doesn’t seem possible.

He blinks, and tries to replay the days in his head. The days on the ship have blurred together, but they’ve been traveling, and he thinks that’s understandable. He tries to go back further, to Coruscant, and remembers the days he spent packing, and the day he met Asori to leave the Coruscant Rebellion, and the day Taraja died--

He blinks, and remembers his last birthday.

He remembers Taraja baking the Mantooian cake. He remembers her talking it up, laughing, trying to get him to smile, because he was still deep in his melancholia from killing Sebastian three months earlier. He remembers her describing how birthdays are celebrated on Mantooine, with dancing and fireworks, remembers her apologizing for not getting fireworks together, but reminding him that they could dance. He remembers taking her up on the offer, spinning her around the apartment, if only because he wanted to show her how grateful he was for her, for being there, still, even after Sebastian.

He remembers her bright blue eyes, her kindness.

He remembers the way she looked at him, like he was human, like he was good.

He remembers how he felt when he looked at her, the hope she inspired in him, how she was his family.

In the cockpit of the Allanar freighter, Cassian begins to tremble.

Taraja is dead.

He’s alone.

He manages to stumble to his pilot’s chair and sits, ignoring his headset and the seat buckles, and instead buries his face in his hands.

“Are humans normally this sad when their birthday is brought up?” K-2SO asks.

“No, I,” Cassian tries, but his breaths are coming too quickly, his heart is racing, and he just can’t breathe.

He slides out of the chair, tumbling to the ground, and hears K-2SO say something from behind him.

Cassian is wearing a thin, loose shirt, but he still scrabbles for the collar, gasping, convinced he’s being choked by something. He cannot _breathe_ , he doesn’t have any air, his heart is going to explode out of his chest.

And he’s _sobbing_.

Loud, stuttering, guttural sobs.

He curls up on himself, fisting his hands in his hair, and presses his face to the cold cabin floor.

A metallic hand settles on his back. Hesitantly at first, and then with more pressure.

“Cassian,” K-2SO says, voice urgent. “Cassian, you are experiencing a panic attack, likely brought on by shock and grief. You need to take deeper breaths, Cassian.”

“I c-can’t,” Cassian groans.

“You need to lower your heart rate, Cassian. _Cassian_.”

“S-She’s d-dead,” Cassian gasps. “She’s dead.”

“Yes. Taraja is dead. Breathe, Cassian.”

Cassian keeps his face pressed into the cold gray floor. He fights himself, remembers his Academy training, and forces his body to breathe evenly, to slow down his racing heart, to forcibly think his way out of the panic attack.

_She’s dead, but you aren’t._

_You have to keep going_.

 _You made a promise_.

“Kay,” Cassian murmurs.

“Yes, Cassian?”

Cassian rolls to his side, and looks up at K-2SO, who kneels beside him. The tall droid has squished himself into the space, a mess of ungainly gray limbs.

Cassian wipes his hands over his face, trying to brush the tears away.

“Thanks for being here, Kay,” he says.

Cassian is twenty-one years old.

K-2SO nods. “You’re welcome, Cassian. I want to be here.”

Cassian drags himself upright, pressing his back to the wall of the freighter. He tucks his knees in close to his chest.

“I miss her, Kay.”

“I miss her, too, Cassian.”

Cassian looks at K-2SO. “Yeah. I think you do.”

Taraja is dead, and Cassian loved her.

He thinks now, looking at K-2SO, that he wasn’t the only one.

He thinks maybe Wada was wrong, and that Taraja was right, that droids can love. At least, that this one can.

He thinks that he’s glad he picked K-2SO in that hangar.

He thinks, _At least now, I have a friend who won’t die_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to watch ROGUE ONE today with my best friend who has read all 156k+ words of this Nonsense, and we have a list of questions/notes to take while we watch, and then I am going to start the ROGUE ONE chapters for this story, it's all very exciting.


	32. Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-one years old when he visits Mantooine for a second time.

Cassian is twenty-one years old when he visits Mantooine for a second time.

It is ten years since his first visit, ten years since he first met Taraja.

The planet is still blindingly red, dominated by a huge, pulsing sun. Cassian guides the Allanar freighter over tall dunes of brilliantly yellow sand, narrowing his eyes so as to avoid the glare of the sunlight that reflects off them. Next to him, K-2SO’s gears are whistling as he readjusts the luminance of the bulbs in his eyes, acclimating to the sudden change in brightness, coming in from deep space.

Cassian flies them to Mazl, the capital city, because it was the city Taraja grew up in, and the one he knows. He takes the ship to the Port, where he met her that first time, and lands the ship just outside a hangar, feeling it settle into the deep orange sand.

Cassian leans back in his seat for a moment, as K-2SO powers the ship down.

He can already feel the heat of the planet crawling inside the ship.

He wonders how Taraja could’ve ever stood the cold of the Coruscant Underworld.

He looks out over endless sand dunes, past the outskirts of the city, which he now realizes is designed somewhat similarly to Rodia, in that the settlements are covered in thick glass tunnels, keeping the grit and heat away from the people.

Cassian comes to a resolution. He unbuckles, and gets to his feet.

“Kay, I need you to stay with the ship.”

“What? Why?” K-2SO asks, sounding almost offended.

“Mantooine isn’t Coruscant,” Cassian says, heading back to the cargo hold, K-2SO’s clanking steps following him. “Imperial droids are just not seen here. You’ll draw attention. You might even cause a riot, and that is definitely not something I can deal with now.”

“I won’t--”

“Kay,” Cassian says, cutting him off. He sighs, understands that K-2SO probably has a hundred arguments ready, likely all to do with the statistical probabilities of Cassian or K-2SO getting attacked, and comes up with a trump card. “Stay with the ship. Stay with _Taraja_. Okay?”

K-2SO stares down at him for a moment. He nods.

Cassian claps him on the arm. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t take a jacket. Instead, he puts on his lightest shirt, a thin white one, remembering Taraja telling him that Mantooians wear white, to deflect the sun’s heat. He takes a small bag and a handful of credits, deciding that while he’s here he might as well buy some food. He also takes Taraja’s gray scarf, wrapping it around his head, to protect his mouth and nose from the sand during his walk from the ship into Mazl.

He gives K-2SO one last nod, and then he exits the ship.

Mantooine is somehow hotter than he remembers, and Cassian starts sweating the second he’s outside. Even the wind is scorching, pelting him with uncomfortably hot air, and Cassian keeps his head down as he walks, looking at the shifting, grainy yellow sand beneath his boots.

The walk is not long, and he makes it to the gates of a clear tunnel, joining a small throng in going inside.

Cassian didn’t really get to explore Mazl when he was here last, and so he gazes around, taking it in. He’s stunned by how colorful it is, considering Taraja rarely wore any color. He realizes now that she never did because color is eye-catching, and it was safer to wear gray and black exclusively around the Underworld. But she did occasionally wear blue paint around her eyes, highlighting their own brilliant blue color.

There are streamers and banners stretched around the tunnels, hanging from the ceilings and walls, advertising bazaars and galas in hundreds of differently colored paints. Booths with vendors selling everything from foods to art pieces to clothes line the sidewalks and alleys, speaking largely in Basic and Mantooian, but Cassian catches snippets of conversation in other languages including, and here his heart skips a beat, Festian.

There _are_ Festians among the crowds, men and women who look like Cassian. He hasn’t seen another Festian since he left Fest, never encountered another one on Coruscant, whether at the Academy or in the Underworld or in an Imperial building, and he almost can’t stop staring at them now. They’re all dressed in black and gray, the colors Cassian grew up wearing, the unofficial colors of Fest, designed to detract from white snow. He sees now what Taraja meant when she described him as standing out when he came to Mantooine as an eleven-year-old from Fest; the Festians could not be more obvious among the black-skinned Mantooians who wear so much white and light colors.

Cassian walks about half a mile, before he decides he’s hungry enough to find something to eat.

He also doesn’t really know what he’s looking for.

He knows he wants to lay Taraja to rest here, but he has no idea what the proper way of going about this is.

All he knows for sure is that he’d be pretty mad if he got arrested on _Mantooine_ , of all places.

Cassian spots a small cafe, and goes inside. It’s dimly lit, perhaps to counter the suffocating sunlight outside, and a cooling unit hums from the ceiling, attempting to send cold air through the space. The walls are painted in shades of purples and reds, finishing in an incredible tiled mosaic of a stunning sunset that dominates the far wall.

It is so eye-catching that it stops Cassian in his tracks. He stands in the middle of the cafe, staring.

He isn’t used to all this color, not after the years he spent in Imperial Intelligence buildings, and at the Royal Imperial Academy.

“Can I help you?”

The voice is soft, and shares Taraja’s accent. Cassian turns and spots a young woman, with black skin slightly lighter than Taraja’s, and hair wrapped up in an emerald green scarf. Her eyes are a cool brown, and she raises one sharp eyebrow at him.

“Sorry,” Cassian says, though he isn’t sure what he’s apologizing for. He realizes there isn’t anyone else in the cafe. “Sorry, are you open?”

The woman snorts. “Fair question. Yes, we are. What can I get you?”

“Caf,” Cassian says, because he thinks this is a safe bet. “And, um… Do you make, uh, matokii, here?”

The woman blinks at him. “Sure. Take a seat.”

“Thanks,” Cassian says. He sits at a table near the window, where he can still look at the sunset mosaic. As he tugs the gray scarf off his head, he realizes that the sunset ends above an ocean, in shades of purple and blue, and that the ocean ends at the floor, which is a soft brown color, less jarring than the sand outside but giving the same vibe. It’s almost enough to make Cassian feel like he’s standing on the beach, watching a real sunset.

The woman returns with his caf, pouring it into a small blue mug.

“Kind of early in the day for matokii, isn’t it?” She remarks.

“Probably,” Cassian says. “It’s my favorite Mantooian dish. My girlfriend used to make it.”

“Ah,” the woman says, nodding. “Good taste. Where are you from?”

Cassian looks at her, and frowns. He’d assumed that she’d easily recognize him to be Festian, since it’d taken Taraja probably half a minute to, the first time they’d met. But Cassian remembers that his accent is less pronounced that it’d been when he was a child, due to his years of suppressing it in the Academy, learning to speak in that Core World Basic that all of the other students spoke in.

But he thinks he should still _look_ Festian. He has the same thin, brown hair, and now has dark stubble growing out over his face. He hadn’t shaved since he left Coruscant, since he’d realized that he didn’t have to anymore.

“I’m from Fest,” he says.

The woman eyes him, holding the pitcher of caf in her hand. “Your accent is subtle.”

“Yeah, I guess it is,” Cassian says. He’d forgotten. He shrugs his shoulders, and adds, “I just came from Coruscant. I spent about seven years there.”

“That would do it,” the woman returns. She walks back to the kitchen.

Cassian looks down at the table, gripping the mug tightly in his hands. He hasn’t thought about his accent, or his identity as a Festian, in years, maybe not since he left Fest when he was thirteen. Asori had told him he’d have to curb his accent a bit at the Academy, and at the Academy he’d been instructed to sever his ties with his homeworld and transfer his loyalty to the Empire, just as all the other cadets were taught. Cassian had never become loyal to the Empire, but he’d put the Rebellion before all other things.

But he’d still ultimately thought of himself as _Festian_ , hadn’t he?

Cassian is so lost in this disturbing train of thought that he almost misses the woman returning, carrying a heaping dish of matokii. It smells absolutely wonderful, warm spices and flavors wafting towards him, and it looks exactly like what Taraja would cook on Coruscant.

He grins, for the first time since Taraja died.

“Thank you,” he tells the woman.

She’s studying him, perhaps bewildered at his wide smile, likely thinking it disproportionately pleased at a common dish she serves everyday. She surprises Cassian when she asks, “Mind if I sit?”

Cassian shrugs. “Be my guest.”

The woman slides into the chair in front of him, crossing her arms over her chest and watching Cassian as he eats.

“Tastes all right?” She asks after a minute of this.

“Yes, very much so,” Cassian says.

“You don’t have to answer this, but we don’t frequently get travelers from the Core Worlds here,” the woman says, “And I’m curious: what brings you to Mantooine?”

Cassian pauses in his eating, and looks up at her.

“My girlfriend was from Mantooine,” he says. “She died about a week ago.”

“Oh, kriff,” the woman breathes. “Oh, wow. I’m so sorry.”

“Mm. Thank you.”

“So, you… You’ve come to tell her family?”

Cassian shakes his head. “She doesn’t have any living family. I’m here to bury her.”

“ _Bury?_ What, no. You can’t do that.”

Cassian stares at her, and sets down his caf. “I’m sorry?”

“We don’t bury our dead on Mantooine,” the woman says.

This is brand new information, and not something Cassian had even considered. He and Taraja never discussed what they wanted to be done with their remains; he thinks they both figured it just wouldn’t matter, that chances were their bodies would be unrecoverable, that the survivor would have to flee the scene, and leave the other’s body behind.

He does think now that another reason they never spoke of it was because the thought of having to bury the other was so difficult to comprehend.

“Why?” Cassian asks.

“The sand,” the woman says. “We have sandstorms weekly here. The sand shifts, and changes, too much, to be stable. We’d be constantly re-burying our dead, and what kind of peace, and rest, is that?”

Cassian nods. “What do you do?”

“We burn the dead.”

Cassian, of course, knows of this method, cremation, but it is not one he had spent a lot of time thinking about. Most everyone is buried on Fest, laid to rest under ice and snow, and no one rarely does anything differently, unless the dead body is going to be presented to someone else, in which case cremation might be deemed more palatable, or kinder. Cassian can remember Nonia Chinzano’s bludgeoned and suffocated body cremated, after she’d died in the collapsed medical wing of the Fest Rebellion base.

Cassian has never thought to want anything different from burial. He wonders if Taraja assumed the opposite, that the dead are burned on Fest, and wonders if she would’ve burned his corpse if he’d been the one who died and she’d survived.

“I didn’t know,” Cassian murmurs.

The woman nods. “You’d have figured it out soon enough, if you’d tried to bury her.”

“Probably. Thanks, uh…”

“Kamaria.”

“Kamaria,” Cassian repeats. He holds his hand out over the table and Kamaria takes it. “I’m Cassian.”

“Cassian,” Kamaria says. “I am very sorry about your girlfriend.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want to talk about her?”

Cassian hesitates. Kamaria notices, and quickly adds, “We do not have to, of course. And I can leave you entirely alone, if you’d prefer that--”

“No, I…” Cassian pauses. “I’m trying to decide.”

Kamaria nods, and leans back in her chair as Cassian stares down at his half-eaten meal.

He understands that Taraja is dead, that he won’t see her again, that she isn’t coming back. He had an incredibly embarrassing breakdown over it in the freighter a couple days previously, one that sent him into a panic attack that _K-2SO_ had to coach him through. He’s thought a lot about Taraja in the days since, particularly today, what with being on Mantooine and all.

He finds that he does want to talk about her, after all. With a stranger, someone who didn’t know her, someone who might not understand the gravity of Cassian’s loss.

“We met when we were children,” he says, speaking before he realizes he wants to. “Right here, in Mazl. I was eleven, and she was thirteen. It was only my second time away from Fest, and she was the first person I met. She had long black hair, and bright, bright blue eyes. She was beautiful. She had more life in her than I had ever seen before.”

“What was her name?”

“Taraja.”

He says her name, hears it cross his tongue, and feels a little weight slide off his shoulders. Kamaria smiles.

“A good name.”

“Yes, it…” Cassian pauses. “Does it mean something? In Mantooian?”

He realizes he never asked. It didn’t seem important.

Kamaria nods. “Yeah. It means ‘hope.’”

Cassian closes his eyes, and laughs a little. Because of course that’s what Taraja’s name means.

“What is funny?”

“Nothing,” Cassian says quietly. “It’s just, uh… That’s exactly who she was. That was her.”

* * *

Cassian returns to the freighter, feeling both wrung out and lighter than he’d been when he’d left it. He opens the door and finds K-2SO there, fiddling with a box of spare parts, and looking very put out indeed.

“Where have you _been?_ ” He demands. “You’ve been gone for _hours_.”

“Sorry,” Cassian says. “I was talking to someone.”

K-2SO stares at him, but Cassian offers no further explanation. He sets his bag down, now brimming with food Kamaria had given him after their long conversation, and makes his way back to the cockpit, tugging Taraja’s scarf off his head as he goes. K-2SO follows.

“Now what?”

“We’re taking the ship further out,” Cassian says, clambering into the pilot’s chair. “And then we’re going to cremate Taraja.”

“ _What?_ ”

“It’s how Mantooians put their dead to rest,” says Cassian. “Come on.”

He starts the ship, and K-2SO settles into the co-pilot’s chair. They take off.

Cassian keeps the ship flying low, passing smoothly over Mazl. The sun has begun to set, lighting the glimmering tunnels and shimmering white buildings, casting long shadows over the sand beyond. He turns the ship away from the sun, over the shadows of the city, keeping in mind what Kamaria had said, that the city will help keep the winds down so he can light the fire.

They fly about half an hour out, to a long stretch of sand with no civilization in sight. Cassian lands the ship, feeling it sink into the orange sand. He turns to K-2SO.

“Let’s do this,” he mutters.

They go back to the cargo hold, to the gray, airtight box holding Taraja’s body. K-2SO unstraps the box from its holding pen as Cassian rewinds the scarf around his head and mouth, and digs in one of his bags, finding an igniter stick.

K-2SO carries the box outside the ship, with Cassian following. K-2SO places the gray box on the orange sand.

They look at the box for a moment.

K-2SO steps forward, and Cassian turns away at the sound of the gasoline hitting the box.

“Cassian,” K-2SO says. “I can do it.”

Cassian looks back, and sees that K-2SO has his hand extended for the igniter stick.

“No,” Cassian says. “No, I can.”

He doesn’t know why this is important to him.

He just knows he has to be the one to do this.

He goes to the box, and drops to his knees in the sand next to it. He leans forward, and presses his forehead to the cold gray box.

“I hope this is okay,” he says, quietly. “I hope it’s what you might’ve wanted. I hope that it’s enough.”

Taraja doesn’t respond from inside the box. He didn’t really expect her to. He doesn’t really know why he’s bothering to talk to her at all, not when she can’t hear him, not when she isn’t there.

“I’m going to keep going,” Cassian says. “I’ll never stop. I made you a promise, and I… It’s something I’ve never considered breaking. It’s one I think I made to myself, to the cause, a very long time ago, too.”

He keeps his eyes on the ground as he speaks, forehead tight to the box Taraja lies in, one hand gripping the lid of the box, the other holding the igniter stick.

“All the way,” he says. “Thank you for everything. Goodbye, Taraja.”

He blinks, and unbidden, he sees her the last time he saw her on Mantooine, thirteen years old, at the mouth of the alley in Mazl, framed by the sun behind her, and remembers the Mantooian farewell she said to him then.

He repeats it now, the words coming to him more naturally, because Taraja took the time to teach some Mantooian to him on Coruscant.

And he adds, for good measure, as she did then, “Until we meet again.”

He wonders if it’s true.

All he can do is hope that it is.

He turns around, and looks at K-2SO. “Did you want to say anything?”

K-2SO cocks his head. “Oh? What should I say?”

“You don’t _have_ to say anything.”

K-2SO ignores him. He looks beyond Cassian, to the gray box. “Goodbye, Taraja Ya’qul. There.”

Cassian nods. He didn’t really expect anything more. He expects that K-2SO doesn’t understand the point of speaking to a dead body at all, can’t even at least grasp the allure of it, like Cassian can. He’s sure K-2SO has analyzed Taraja’s corpse, knows she’s absolutely dead and gone, and is probably concerned that Cassian might not know this.

But he does.

So very painfully.

He settles back, and then he turns the igniter stick on, and presses it to the edge of the gray box.

It ignites immediately, and Cassian clambers to his feet, moving back, out of the way. He goes to stand next to K-2SO and they watch the brilliant yellow and orange flames travel up the gray box, turning blue when they connect to the fuel, moving only more rapidly. In a thankfully short time, the entire box is aflame, reds, oranges, yellows, and blues, pitted against the equally bright sand, the big blue sky overhead, Mazl in the distance.

Cassian forces himself to watch.

The sun sets behind them.

Soon, all that is left of Taraja is bits of gray ash.

Cassian leaves it be. The wind will return soon, to pick up the ash and carry it out over the sand, spreading the gray through yellow, orange, and red grains, until it is covered in it, until it becomes indistinguishable, or is thrown into the big sky.

He and K-2SO return to the freighter, and settle in. Cassian starts the ship.

“Where are we going, Cassian?” K-2SO asks.

The answer comes readily to Cassian, like he’d known all along.

“Fest,” he says.

K-2SO nods, and begins to put in the coordinates.

“And Kay?”

“Yes, Cassian?”

Cassian tugs his headset on. “I don’t want to talk about Taraja again.”

K-2SO hesitates for a moment, but nods. “Very well.”

The freighter lifts off, turning to the intensely red sky, flying past the sunset.

* * *

Cassian thinks he should feel something more when he sees Fest for the first time in eight years.

But the planet is the same as it’s always been; gray, ice-covered, rocky, and bitter.

For the first time, Cassian can almost _relate_ to it.

They land in Fulcra.

The capital city has not changed much over the years. Cassian leaves K-2SO in the freighter again, and K-2SO must sense his melancholy and his strained mind, for he doesn’t argue. Cassian pulls on Wada’s blue parka and walks through the streets of Fulcra, passing by restaurants and stores he used to visit with Serafima, Nerezza, and Zeferino, repair shops he frequented with Wada, the mail office he’d go to with Gabriel, when he was so young, when he had to hold his father’s hand as they walked.

Cassian feels very old. And so tired.

Cassian is twenty-one years old.

He ends up walking back to Serafima’s old house, and from there, to the plain, the empty field, where the Andors are buried.

All three of them are still there, looking just as he’d left them, sleeping under the cold, gray earth.

He doesn’t linger with them long. He opens his mouth, and finds he has no words to say.

He cannot tell them what has become of him, in the eight years since he left Fest. He can’t tell them about Wada. He can’t tell them about Asori. He can’t tell them about Taraja.

He can’t tell them about Zeferino, and how Cassian killed him in cold blood.

They’re dead, anyway, Cassian reasons. It doesn’t matter.

Cassian walks away.

He makes his way back into Fulcra, his head down, idly kicking loose stones in the street.

He wonders why he bothered coming back here, anyway, what he was hoping to find.

But he remembers Kamaria, her confusion, how surprised she’d been when he’d told her he was Festian.

 _“I’m not sure I know who I am anymore,” Cassian says to Asori_.

Cassian grew up on Fest, and had always believed he’d been shaped by it, had become the man he is due to the planet. But he realizes now that he also grew up in the Rebellion, and that maybe it was the war that shaped him, that made him callous, cruel, and uncompromising. A spy. A thief. A killer.

Or maybe that’s just who he is.

_“I’m not good, Zeferino.”_

He stops in the street and closes his eyes.

 _“All the way,” Cassian promises Taraja_.

He wonders if there’s a way he reconcile what he’s done, if he can find absolution before he fully gives himself over to the war, sacrifices his life for his cause. He wonders if it’s possible. He wonders who he needs to ask for it.

He stands in the street in thought, and is startled by his name.

“Andor? Cassian Andor?”

He turns, and it’s Dimmi Selmura.

Selmura is close to forty years old now, and balding. He has a jagged scar cut across his face, turning the edge of his mouth permanently down, though he frowned so much before that it isn’t even that different. He’s dressed in a tattered black coat, and he’s staring at Cassian like he’s looking at a ghost.

Cassian thinks that he isn’t far off.

“Selmura,” Cassian says. He crosses the street to the man, and holds his hand out.

Selmura takes it, gawking. “Kriff. You’re alive. And, and… Grown up.”

“Yeah. How are you?”

Selmura laughs. “Same old. Still kicking.”

“The Rebellion’s still around?”

“Oh, yeah,” Selmura says. “Definitely. Travia too.”

Cassian pauses. “Not Sids?”

“Sids? No. He died about… oh, four, five years ago. Shot by stormtroopers.”

“Oh,” Cassian says.

“Yeah, it was rough. Travia was pretty upset about it, obviously. And everyone loved Sids, too. But life goes on.”

“Life goes on,” Cassian repeats.

“How are you? What’ve you been up to?”

Cassian laughs, because where could he possibly begin. “It’s a long, long story.”

“Yeah, I bet. Well, listen. Did you come back to fight in the Rebellion again?”

“I’m not sure why I’m here, to be honest,” Cassian says, which is the truth.

“Okay,” Selmura says. “Well, how about this. I take you back to base with me, and you can talk to Travia. She’ll be real happy to see you, I bet. You were one of the first recruits, and she’ll be kriffing thrilled to see you alive.”

Cassian nods. “Sure. Okay. But, uh… We have to go back to my ship first.”

“Uh, yeah. You got a bag, or something?”

“An Imperial droid.”

* * *

When Cassian had left Fest, the Rebellion had been recovering from the Empire bombing and completely destroying its base, and most of the rebels were on the lookout for a new one. He’d never gotten to see the new base, never knew where it was.

As it is, it’s just outside of Fulcra, set in what is more or less a hidden fortress in the side of a mountain. It’s possible to reach the base by foot, but it’s difficult. The preferred mode of transport is speeder, and this is what Selmura uses to take K-2SO and Cassian inside.

There are more rebels around the base than Cassian thinks he ever saw in his years with the Fest Rebellion. He looks around in awe, staring at the tall steel ceilings, the speeders that line the edges of the walls, the boxes and boxes of bomb-making equipment and ammunition. The air is loud with chatter, Basic and Festian, and everything smells strongly of frost, smoke, and fuel.

 _Oh_ , Cassian thinks.

He half-expects Nerezza to walk around the corner at any second.

She doesn’t.

Cassian follows Selmura through the chilly corridors, K-2SO clunking along at his side, drawing slack-jawed gazes and wide eyes from the rebels. Cassian avoids their questioning stares; he’s sure he doesn’t know any of them, sure that all but maybe a handful of the rebels he did know are either dead or gone.

They reach a large command room, and Selmura leads him inside.

Cassian spots Travia Chan right away.

She’s in her repulsor-chair, which is dotted with scorch marks from blaster fire. Her steel gray hair is shorter than it was the last time Cassian saw her, arranged tightly to the top of her head. Her sand-colored skin is the same though, as are her cold, brown, teardrop-shaped eyes. She looks up from a datapad, noticing K-2SO first, towering Imperial droid he is, and then her eyes land on Cassian.

She sets the datapad down slowly.

“I’ll be damned,” she murmurs. “Cassian Andor.”

“Hello, Travia,” Cassian says.

Travia guides her chair over, to Cassian. She holds out her hand, and Cassian takes it, staring down at her. The Icewoman’s eyes are warmer than he’s ever seen them.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she remarks.

“I didn’t think you would, either, to be honest.”

“I’m sure you have quite the story to tell,” Travia says. She jerks her head to the side. “Come. Let’s hear it.”

She leads Cassian, K-2SO, and Selmura to her office, a small side room with a tiny window that shows only piles of white snow. She has a water boiler in the office, and she turns it on, setting out three mugs of Festian tea without asking.

Cassian has not had Festian tea since he was thirteen. He swallows it too quickly, and it burns his throat. He’s glad for the ache.

Travia settles in her chair, one eye locked on K-2SO.

“Go ahead,” she tells Cassian.

And Cassian tells his story. He talks about going to Rodia with Wada. He talks about going then to Coruscant, and the Underworld, and finding the Rebellion there. He describes Asori, and the mission she gave him. He outlines his years at the Royal Imperial Academy, and his job after graduation, in Imperial Intelligence, and how he came to find and reprogram K-2SO.

He doesn’t tell them about the prisoners he killed in Lemniscate.

Or Sebastian. Or Taraja. Or Zeferino.

Travia and Selmura listen in stunned silence, a silence that lasts even after Cassian finishes.

Selmura breaks it, with a long string of Festian curses that makes Cassian smile.

Travia is more composed, but only just.

“That is… An incredible story,” she says.

“It’s also a true one.”

“I believe you,” Travia says. “It is still an extraordinary story. You’re a hero.”

Cassian looks away at that.

Travia stares into her empty mug of tea for a moment. She looks back up again, straightening in her chair.

“Are you here to return to our Rebellion?”

Cassian opens his mouth, and is surprised by his own answer: “Yes.”

He quickly adds, “Not forever. But… a little bit. A year or so, maybe.”

Because Fest is something he knows. Fest is where he was born, where he learned how to be a person, where he nurtured his values and beliefs. Fest is where he studied Gabriel, where he danced with Serafima, where he climbed after Nerezza, where he played with Zeferino. Fest is where he could look in a mirror, and think, _My name is Cassian Andor_ , and know that meant something.

Fest is the place he felt most like himself.

He barely knows who Cassian Andor is anymore.

He wants to reacquaint himself.

But he still has the desperate drive to destroy the Empire, to combat it, to beat it, to land decisive blows against it. He still wants to tear it apart, to rip it to shreds, to feel vengeance for everyone he’s loved and lost. And he still can’t do that on Fest. He’ll have to move on.

But not yet.

He’ll move on, but as Cassian Andor.

Not the ghost of him, which is who he is at this moment.

Travia smiles. “We’re glad to have you, and your impressive knowledge and experience.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“What was your rank the last time you were here, Andor?”

“Um…” Cassian frowns, and tries to remember. “Sergeant.”

“And you were a First Lieutenant with the Empire?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hm.” Travia nods, and then looks up at Cassian, and he’s startled by the pride in her eyes, the way she expresses her approval towards him, more approval than she’s ever shown towards him before.

“Well, we’d better make you a Captain, then, shouldn’t we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Pyro" by Kings of Leon, and "Skeletons" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were very helpful for this chapter, and the development of Taraja and Cassian's relationship.
> 
> Taraja is a Swahili name that does (supposedly) mean "hope". Kamaria is also a Swahili name, and it supposedly means "moon". "Matokii" is a silly misspelling of matoke, which doesn't exist in STAR WARS.
> 
> A reminder that I have made up everything about Mantooine; no idea what it's climate, or people, are like.
> 
> Also a reminder that Travia Chan is an old EU character.
> 
> I have started the ROGUE ONE chapters, and have literal PAGES of notes to get through. Oof.


	33. Renaissance Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-two years old, and he’s happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RENAISSANCE MAN, meaning: a person with a diverse range of knowledge and expertise.
> 
> RENAISSANCE, meaning: rebirth.

Cassian is twenty-two years old, and he’s happy.

He’s been on Fest for over a year.

It is a year that Cassian has, despite everything, enjoyed.

He knows Travia and Selmura, but as he walks around the base on his first day back, he thinks that they might be the only ones.

That is until he runs into Viri, Nerezza’s old girlfriend.

The Twi’lek woman spots Cassian from across the cafeteria. Her blue skin pales for a moment as she stares, and then her face breaks into a wide grin.

Before Cassian knows it, she’s crossed the room and thrown herself into his arms. Cassian catches her, staggering a little.

“Cassi! Cassi!”

“Hello, Viri,” he says.

She pulls back to beam at him, her tentacles hanging past her shoulders. “You came back! And you got _tall!_ Taller than Ezza!”

“Yeah, I did,” Cassian says.

“We must catch up,” Viri says.

And they do. Viri steals a bottle of Festian spiced liquor, and they sequester themselves in a corner of the base that night, for Cassian to tell Viri of what he’s been up to in the years since he left Fest, and for her to do the same. They also inevitably talk about Nerezza, and it’s been so long since Cassian has gotten to talk to someone else who knew her, the last person being Wada, and he relishes in the conversation, reminiscing and laughing, and smiling more than he had in a year.

He fits back into the Fest Rebellion so easily and so gracefully, it’s almost like he never left.

Cassian has inherited that charm that made Gabriel so beloved to his soldiers in his Insurrectionist Cell, that authoritative air Serafima naturally radiated, that fire and confidence that made Nerezza so respected and admired, and that casual swagger he witnessed Zeferino employing on multiple occasions, and he makes friends quickly. He’s fascinating, to the Festians; it’s quite uncommon for anyone to leave Fest, and even more uncommon for someone to come _back_. Fest is incredibly polarizing, and people either love it enough to stay, or hate it enough to leave.

Cassian differs; he finds Fest to be liminal.

It’s his homeworld, and he accepts everything that means, haunting ghosts and beloved memories together.

Selmura is his guide for his first weeks back, introducing Cassian to the rebels and the base itself. K-2SO shadows Cassian through this process, once again dealing with a Rebellion that wants nothing to do with him, and rebels who don’t trust him.

Taraja was responsible for getting the Coruscant rebels to trust K-2SO.

This time around, it’s thanks to the children.

There are children crawling around the base, not unusual or unexpected, as Cassian was also once just a child desperate to help, stuffing messages into his parka pockets and trolling for gossip in the streets of Fulcra. These children are as young as Cassian was then, with brilliant smiles and wide eyes, hungry for acknowledgment and education.

While the adult rebels give K-2SO a wide berth, the children approach him.

They don’t yet have their parents’ and older siblings’ fears and prejudices. They don’t yet understand why their families pull them away from men dressed in white armor, or black uniforms. They haven’t yet connected the insignia on K-2SO’s shoulders with the Empire. They might not yet even understand what the Rebellion is doing, or why it exists.

They look at K-2SO, seven feet tall, with bulbous eyes, and they see a new playmate.

K-2SO wants nothing to do with them at first.

The children trail after him, whispering to each other, openly gawking at the droid. They’ve never seen anything quite like him before--KX series security droids would have no point on Fest, which is not an Imperial stronghold--and they’re curious. K-2SO is disinterested in their stares, and regularly complains to Cassian.

“How do I get them to leave me alone?” He demands, cornering Cassian one day, as he’s going over inventory reports.

“What?”

“The _children_ ,” K-2SO says. “They won’t leave me alone. I don’t like it. How do I get them to go away?”

“They’re children, Kay,” Cassian says. “They’re curious about you. They don’t know what to make of you. To be fair, I don’t know what to make of you, either.”

“Ha, ha. I am serious.”

Cassian sighs. “Kay, just… be _nice_ to them, okay? You can be as rude and bitter towards the adults as you’d like--”

“They’re rude to _me_ \--”

“--But the children are still _good_ ,” Cassian finishes. “Don’t upset them. They’ll be plenty upset soon enough.”

K-2SO considers this. Cassian keeps one eye on him, as he stands in the doorway, shifting uncomfortably from side to side.

K-2SO changes after that.

When he next encounters a gaggle of children, he kneels, allowing the children to surround him, touching the gray plates on his chest, tapping their fingers against his steel head. They delight in poking his recharge port, and run away cackling when he shows them his whirring computer interface arm.

But they warm to him. They bring him broken toys, and K-2SO drops whatever he’s working on to fix them. They reward him in the only ways they can; with little drawings, grease for his joints, and hugs.

Cassian watches one little girl press a kiss to K-2SO’s gray cheek. The gesture leaves the droid’s bulbs blinking, trying to process what has just happened.

Cassian relates to K-2SO in that affection is always a little startling. He imagines more so for the droid, who has only ever been a witness to affection, whether it was Taraja kissing Cassian when she walked in the door, or Cassian wrapping his arms around her in the kitchen; K-2SO has never actually received affection himself.

Cassian resolves to be kinder to the droid, to be more obvious in his gratitude, to show how happy he is that K-2SO chooses to stay with him. It is not a feeling Cassian has experienced frequently in his life; he tends to lose people before he can tell them how glad he is for them.

Being kinder to K-2SO is easier said than done, because K-2SO’s default state is sarcasm and cynicism.

Cassian thinks that this habit explains a lot about Taraja and K-2SO’s friendship.

But K-2SO is kind and helpful towards Cassian, and the children, and that’s all Cassian really wants him to be: good.

The children also adore Cassian, but he thinks it’s more because he takes the time to talk to them, to teach them, and to listen to their opinions.

He remembers how Nerezza fretted over when the right time to teach her little brother to fight was. He remembers how frustrated he’d been with her at the time, with her hesitation, and her unwillingness.

He understands it now.

Because they’re just children, just babies, and they want to fight. They’re still losing teeth, and they ask him the best way to land a punch on someone. They get excited when they grow an inch, and then they want to know how to put a blaster together.

They break Cassian’s heart daily.

But he has to teach them. Someone has to, and he’s one of the most qualified and knowledgeable rebels on Fest, maybe _the_ most.

He remembers being young like them, and how it was Nerezza and Wada’s training and lessons that saved his life when he was a child, stupid and naive.

He holds seminars with the children, teaching them hand-to-hand combat, and doing everything he can to not remind himself of Gallamby at the Academy, and the vindictive and bloodthirsty way the Captain would fight. He takes them out on the mountain and sets up targets, and they learn how to shoot, and Cassian does his best to ignore Gallamby’s voice in his head, coaching him through it, reminding him of all the _rebel scum_ he’d get to kill one day.

He teaches the children how to survive, including by giving them piloting lessons, using Wada’s preferred method of learning to crash first.

He watches a little boy sit in the pilot’s chair, his arms barely long enough to reach all the controls, and wonders if this bruising ache was what Wada felt when he taught Cassian.

The children quickly learn that they can go to Cassian with any problem, and that he’ll help them, even if that only means he listens as they spill their worries and fears.

When this happens, Cassian takes the anxious child to a quiet area on base, and teaches them how to repair their old clothes, or how to fix a heater, or how to make a Festian dish or two, all things Zeferino taught him.

These lessons and activities helped him and Zeferino bond, helped them feel like brothers and family, and were always something that calmed Cassian, made him feel like he was home.

It is a feeling he wants the children to experience.

Plus, knowing how to fend for yourself is a useful skill.

Cassian knows better than most how family and home can be gone in a blink of an eye.

He’s currently teaching a boy called Jerico how to cook traditional Festian stew in the kitchen on base. Jerico is eight years old, with round cheeks, soft brown skin, and big brown eyes that take up most of his face. He sits on the counter as Cassian works, his eyes downcast, kicking his feet in the air.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Cassian asks, not even knowing what _it_ is exactly. He just knows that Jerico came to him with tears running down his face, and that something is very wrong.

Jerico doesn’t look at him, keeping his eyes downcast, watching his kicking feet. Cassian sighs.

“I’m going to make you start cutting vegetables if you don’t want to talk.”

Jerico looks at him from the corner of his eye.

At last, he says, “My brother died.”

Cassian pauses. He thinks about Jerico, wondering if he knew that he had even had a brother. He doesn’t think so; he can’t picture anyone, or remember a name.

“What was his name?”

“Jaume. He was sixteen.”

Jerico is speaking in Festian, which Cassian suspects is a kind of defense mechanism, or an indicator that the loss of his brother is making Jerico revert to his familial language over Galactic Basic. Cassian understands; he remembers how the shock of seeing Zeferino again when he was thirteen caused them both to yell in Festian without pause.

Cassian speaks more Festian in any given week now than he did in the eight years he wasn’t on Fest. He was a slow speaker when he first tried it after so long, discovering that the words had slid to the back of his mind, and that he needed time and thought to get them back. He’d picked it up again though, and it had even changed his accent, bringing it to the forefront of his everyday speech, to the point that his Basic had the accent he’d grown up with, before he’d gone to Coruscant and been forced to smother it.

He’s glad to have it back.

He sounds more like himself now.

“I’m sorry about Jaume, Jerico,” Cassian says, also in Festian.

Jerico nods, biting his lip. “He was with a team, and they were going to strike an Imperial weapons warehouse, and… There were ‘troopers.”

“Ah.”

“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Jerico says, and his lip begins to tremble.

Cassian pauses in his work, setting the cutting knife down on the counter. He goes to Jerico and wraps his arms around the boy, who clings to Cassian’s shirt and sobs into his shoulder.

“I know,” Cassian murmurs. “You can cry. It’s okay.”

“My Mama, she w-won’t stop c-crying,” Jerico says, in between sobs. “I w-want to help her but I d-don’t know h-how.”

“It isn’t your job to,” Cassian says, gently. “She’s grieving, just like you. She needs time. She’ll be okay. You will too.”

“But Jaume is _dead_ …”

Cassian pulls back, putting his hands on Jerico’s face and looking into the boy’s watery brown eyes. He sees Jerico’s raw grief, the shock, the horror of this sudden loss.

Cassian has been there.

“I know,” Cassian says. “And it’s a loss you won’t ever forget. But Jaume would want you to move on. You’ll be happy again.”

Jerico hiccups a little, and looks back at Cassian. “Do you have a brother, Cass?”

Most of the children call Cassian by this nickname. He thinks it likely stems from them just not interested in being bothered with the additional two syllables. He doesn’t mind.

“I did,” Cassian says. “His name was Zeferino.”

“Did he die?”

_And Cassian raises the pistol, and shoots Zeferino in the forehead._

“Yes, he’s dead,” Cassian says.

“Do you still miss him?”

Cassian hesitates, considering his words, and his feelings.

He thinks he hasn’t processed Zeferino’s death properly, not like how he’s been able to deal with Taraja’s. He isn’t sure if it’s because he still barely remembers that Zeferino _is_ dead, and that Cassian was the one who killed him, or if it’s because Zeferino was a specter over Cassian’s life for so long that he might as well continue to be one now.

He knows he can’t tell Jerico that he was the one who killed his brother. He knows he can’t tell him that his brother betrayed his family, and Fest, and fought for the Empire.

Cassian forces himself to consider Zeferino, not as Captain Zeferino Andor of Imperial Intelligence, but as Zef, his older brother.

“Yes, I do,” Cassian says.

Because he misses _that_ Zeferino; his big brother. The one who took care of him, who taught him, who played with him in the snow of Fest, held his hand through the busy streets of Fulcra.

He’s missed him for a very long time.

Cassian looks at Jerico, his head level with the child’s.

“I’ll always miss him,” he says. “But I also know that he’s gone, and that being sad over it all the time isn’t doing me any favors. It’s okay to be sad about not having your brother around, but you have to remember that it’s also okay to be happy without him, too.”

Jerico doesn’t look convinced. “I don’t know…”

“I know,” Cassian says. “It’ll be very hard at first. But you’ll get there, okay? I promise.”

“You promise?”

“I do.”

Jerico considers this. He looks away from Cassian and down to the boiling pot of stew.

“I’m hungry,” he says.

Cassian snorts. “Yeah, okay. Get down from there and grab a bowl.”

Jerico slides off the counter. He pauses for a moment, and then throws his arms around Cassian’s waist briefly, before trotting off to find a bowl.

Cassian watches him go, and hopes he’s doing the right thing.

He remembers being nine years old on Fest, and recruiting children for the Rebellion. He remembers how deeply he felt their deaths, how the grief and regret threatened to drown him, how he’d tuck himself away and hide, as if he could physically run from the losses.

He feels the deaths of the child soldiers he teaches and helps now, too, just as deeply.

The difference now is that Cassian is twenty-two years old, and is so used to this kind of grief, this melancholy, that it feels just like an extension of his personality. It is the closest thing he has to living family.

He can tuck it into the back of his mind, where all his other ghosts linger.

He can go about his day just fine.

* * *

Cassian doesn’t only work with the children; he works with the adult rebels, too.

He teaches them as he does the children, sharing everything he was taught at the Royal Imperial Academy with the hardened and skeptical Festian rebels. Many of them find his story unbelievable, and he doesn’t really blame them for their doubt; luckily, he’s able to backup his claims with his actual skill and knowledge.

He joins small teams in bombing Imperial centers around the planet. He leads squads into hangars to either steal Imperial ships, or destroy supplies. He gets caught up in firefights every week, exchanging blaster fire with stormtroopers and deathtroopers alike; he never sees any Imperial officers in their gray uniforms, and for that he’s thankful. He doesn’t want to confront those memories. Not yet.

Most of all though, he recruits.

It was what he was best at before he left Fest, and so it follows that it’s what Travia asks him to do, in between sharing his expertise with the Rebellion.

He doesn’t mind. He knows he’s good at it.

He meets with regular Festians around Fulcra, and he tells them an abridged version of his story.

It’s a tragedy, he thinks, and most of the people he talks to sympathize with him greatly. He leaves them ready and willing to help his cause.

The Fest Rebellion is expanding by the day, and he’s proud of it, and never hesitates to offer his enthusiasm and gratification in the Rebellion’s work.

He thinks this is why Travia is so caught off-guard when he goes to her with his resignation, almost a year and a half since he returned to Fest.

“But…” She stares at him from her repulsor-chair, blinking slowly. “But _why?_ I thought you were happy here, Captain Andor.”

“I am,” Cassian says. “Very much so. But it’s time for me to move on.”

He’d only intended to stay on Fest for a year at most, and it’s been much longer than that. He came to Fest with no hope, and no expectations, and now he’s mostly happy, and rested, and can look around the Fest Rebellion, taking in all the faces and voices, and feel accomplished.

This is why he needs to move on.

He isn’t meant for happiness, rest, and satisfaction.

He’s meant for sacrifice, constant work, and exhaustion.

Travia surveys him. “It isn’t enough.”

Cassian nods. “The reasons I left Fest when I was thirteen still stand. There’s work to do here, but it isn’t… It isn’t for me.”

By that he means, _It isn’t close enough to the Empire for me._

“You’d sacrifice your personal happiness for this cause,” Travia says. “You’d hang yourself.”

Cassian smiles grimly. “Yes.”

Travia sighs. “I wish I could convince you to stay. I was thinking of making you my official second-in-command here.”

She hasn’t had one, not since Sids died, when the loss to the Fest Rebellion was so great and painful, and no one believed anyone could ever possibly fill his shoes.

Cassian is touched that she thinks he might be able to.

“I’m honored, ma’am,” he says. “Truly. But leadership, at that level… It isn’t for me.”

It’d be too impersonal. Cassian works best with others, always has, in close quarters and in small teams. He gets to know people, to know them personally, little details about them, their wishes, their families. He gets them to trust him, and he gets them to talk.

Travia nods. “You’re right. I think you’re destined for something far greater, Andor.”

Cassian doesn’t know what that would be. He thinks he’s most likely destined for a gruesome death in a dark alley, alone, on some far away, lonesome planet.

(He’s entirely wrong.)

“You’ve built something remarkable here, ma’am,” he says. “The Fest Rebellion. It wouldn’t exist without you. We’ve always been lucky to have you.”

Travia smiles, a soft, barely there smile.

“My mother was Festian,” she says at last. “My father was from Dandoran; he came here on a trading voyage, met my mother, and… never went back.”

Cassian blinks, and remembers Dandoran from his geography lessons at the Academy. A watery planet, in Hutt Space in the Outer Rim, almost half a galaxy away.

“I was born on Fest, and I grew up on Fest,” Travia says. “I don’t _look_ classically Festian, you could say, but this is just my home as it is anyone else’s. I’ve loved it, despite its grayness, and its cruel weather. You understand.”

She stares up at Cassian.

“I didn’t found the Fest Rebellion,” Travia says. “I did start up a small cell, over in Edur. But I was curious as to how things were going in the capital, so I went to Fulcra seventeen years ago, and discovered another Insurrectionist Cell, and there I met your father.”

Cassian stares at her. “You knew my father?”

Travia has never mentioned it. Gabriel had died before Cassian knew to ask.

“Very briefly,” Travia says. “I went back to Edur, and he died shortly after, I understand. But he made an impression. He was… gallant. Oratorial. Beloved, among his soldiers.” She looks at Cassian. “Gabriel Andor founded the resistance that would spawn the Fest Rebellion. I’ve grown it, and expanded it, to what it is today. But you, Cassian, and your work with all those children… You’ve shaped the next generation of this Rebellion. You’ve given yourself, and me, and your father, a legacy.”

Cassian looks down at the ground, unable to look at Travia anymore. He’s overwhelmed by her words, the clear admiration in her voice.

“Your father would be very proud of you, Cassian.”

Cassian swallows hard. He forces his eyes up, to nod at Travia.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I accept your resignation,” she continues. “But just know… There is always a place for you here. Fest will always be your home, whenever you need it.”

He smiles. “I know. Thank you for everything, ma’am.”

He turns to go, and her words linger with him, of home, and he thinks of his newfound hope, and he turns back.

“Ma’am, have you considered contacting the Mantooine Liberators at all?”

Travia arches an eyebrow. “No. Should I?”

Cassian pauses, and chooses his words carefully. “I had some friends, in the Coruscant Rebellion, who were from Mantooine. We fought together on Coruscant. They were good people. Resilient, and reliable. I think… I think it might be worth getting in touch with the Mantooine Liberators. Sharing information, and working with them… I think you’d both be stronger, and better for it.”

Cassian knows that he is better for having known Taraja, and her Mantooine team. He thinks the Fest Rebellion might benefit similarly.

Travia reflects on his words, gazing out her shabby office window.

“I’ll take it under advisement, Andor,” she says at last.

“Thank you,” Cassian says.

He leaves her office.

* * *

Leaving Fest is easier this time around.

He thinks it’s because he’s _choosing_ to leave, rather than being forced out, more or less, by his suffocating grief. He isn’t leaving primarily because his sister died; he’s leaving because he believes he has more to do out in the galaxy, than he can do on Fest, so far from everything else.

Like last time, he has a traveling companion.

But this companion complains a whole lot more than Wada ever did, in the eight years Cassian knew him.

“I hope we’re going somewhere warmer,” K-2SO says, going over the pre-flight checklist. “My joints ache. This rock is cutting years from my expected lifespan.”

“Sorry,” Cassian says, not really feeling sorry at all. “And we are. We’re going to Corellia.”

He thinks of everything Taraja had told him about the other Rebellions she’d encountered, in her years of traveling before she got to Coruscant, and he thinks Corellia might be his best bet at finding another, established Rebellion group. He’s also already met a Corellian rebel; Melshi, the bartender in the Blue Sector in Coronet.

He isn’t sure Melshi will remember him, or if he’ll even be there, but he figures it’s worth a shot.

If Corellia doesn’t work out, he’ll go to Alderaan.

He’ll find other Rebellions.

K-2SO brightens up, pleased at the thought of Corellia. He settles into the co-pilot’s seat, while Cassian slides into the pilot’s seat of the Allanar freighter.

Cassian looks out the window, staring out over the snow-covered mountains, canyons, and deep crevices that make up Fest. The sky above is a dull gray, swirling with heavy clouds and suffocatingly cold winds.

It _is_ home, in a way.

Fest brings out the best in him, in Cassian Andor, and he knows that by leaving it, he’s giving up the better parts of himself.

He knows it’s worth it; knows the Rebellion, the cause, is worth his sacrifice.

He’s glad to have had this year, this short, relatively peaceful, year, before he gives himself over to the Rebellion entirely.

Cassian is twenty-two years old.

(This is the last time he’ll ever see Fest.)

(Cassian Andor will die in four years.)

K-2SO sets course for Corellia, and Cassian sends them into hyperspace, leaving his cold, gray homeworld of Fest in the space behind him.

* * *

Corellia, and Coronet, is much like Cassian remembers.

The capital is bustling and noisy, and he and K-2SO only just manage to snag a space in the Port of Coronet for the freighter. It takes Cassian twenty minutes to talk K-2SO into staying with the freighter, culminating in Cassian making up a phantom noise coming from an exhaust port that he needs K-2SO to check out.

He feels a little guilty for the lie, but only a little.

He returns to the Blue Sector, and the Fel Swoop.

To his amazement, and incredible luck, Melshi is working behind the bar again.

He narrows his eyes when he sees Cassian, and Cassian can tell his memory is working, trying to place where he’s seen Cassian before. Cassian helps him out, coming up to him and leaning his arms on the top of the bar.

“About four years ago,” Cassian says. “I’m the rebel from Coruscant.”

Melshi’s face clears. He grins.

“Andor,” he says.

“Hello, Melshi.”

“Asori send you?”

“Asori--” Cassian breaks off, staring. He’s quite confident he hadn’t mentioned Asori by name to Melshi when they first met. “You know her?”

“Yeah. She was here, about two months ago.”

“ _Why?_ ”

Melshi laughs. “To introduce herself, make some contacts. We’re branching out.”

“Branching out?” Cassian repeats.

“Where have you been? There’s something in the air. We’re _mobilizing_ , honest to entropy. Getting in touch with other Resistances, and the like.”

Cassian takes the information in, startled. He’s quite glad to hear it, glad that Asori has made the executive decision to seek out other Rebellions around the Core Worlds. Corellia is a good place to start; it was the exact same conclusion Cassian came to on his own.

“I’m not… with the Coruscant Rebellion, exactly,” Cassian says. “I’m here to join your Rebellion, actually.”

“How about that,” Melshi murmurs. “Well, for that, you get a shot on the house.”

Cassian laughs, but accepts the glass of Corellian whiskey Melshi pushes towards him. He downs it in one go, shaking his head.

“Who do I talk to?”

“The guy who runs my sector of Coronet,” Melshi says. “Davits Draven. I’ll message him, he’ll stop by and talk to you.”

“Okay,” Cassian says. “I’ll have another glass while I wait.”

He drinks the whiskey slowly, sitting at a table near the window looking out over the Blue Sector street. There’s a tattoo parlor opposite the cantina, illuminated in flickering neon lights, trying to dazzle the passersby. Cassian remembers the last time he was on Coruscant, with Daren and Ethan, and he wonders what became of his Academy friends, where they might be now.

His sorrowful thoughts are interrupted by a man sliding into the chair opposite him.

The man is about twice Cassian’s age, with white skin and a crop of dusty yellow-red hair that’s receding across his forehead. His eyes are sharp, and calculating, and he folds his arms across his chest as he looks at Cassian.

Cassian stares back, impassive.

“I’m Davits Draven,” the man says. He holds his hand out over the table, and Cassian takes it.

“Cassian Andor.”

“I know who you are.”

“You do,” Cassian says, his voice a question.

“Yes. Asori Joshi told me about you, when she was here.”

Cassian blinks. He doesn’t know why Asori would’ve spoken about him; he can only guess that it was to curry favor, that she used Cassian’s name, and maybe Taraja’s, around Corellia in an effort to find the Corellian Resistance. He assumes Taraja’s worked better, as he only ever met Melshi, and he has a hard time imagining Asori in a dismal cantina like this.

“What did she say?” Cassian asks.

“She said that you’re the best soldier she’s ever seen,” Draven says. “That you’re astonishingly brave. Clever. Calculating. Willing to make the decisions, and the actions, that many would avoid. That you’d do anything for this cause.”

Cassian takes this in.

“Quite a reputation.”

“I thought so,” Draven says. “I thought I’d very much like to meet this Cassian Andor, should I ever come across him. Asori didn’t know where you’d gone. She said something about you going away to Mantooine; that disappointed me.”

“Why?”

Draven gives him a scathing look. “Mantooine isn’t where the war is. I thought, if this Cassian Andor is the man Asori said he is, then he couldn’t possibly stay there, and be satisfied.”

Cassian thinks about Fest, and the year he spent there. He thinks of how happy he was, how content, the satisfaction he drew from seeing the Fest Rebellion thriving and successful.

But he knows Draven is right about him, too.

“No,” Cassian says. “It wasn’t enough.”

Draven leans forward, staring at Cassian intently. His eyes are dark, and cold.

 _This is an uncompromising man_ , Cassian thinks.

He reminds Cassian of Gallamby, in a way.

Cassian wonders if he should be afraid.

“I need the best,” Draven says. “Men who are willing to sacrifice everything for the cause. Men who will do the difficult, thankless work without complaint. The truly dangerous, morally apprehensive, _challenging_ work. Fighting the war that takes place in the shadows. Asori Joshi told me that if anyone could do it, that you could. Was she right? Is this what you do, Andor?”

It is. It really is.

Fest wasn’t dangerous enough. It didn’t have the dark, cruel, and dreadful work that really needs to be done, if the Empire is to be taken down. It didn’t have the work Cassian was trained to do, at the Royal Imperial Academy, or on the streets of the Coruscant Underworld.

The work that is devastating, the work that is terrible. The work that blemishes the soul, that chips away at the person doing it.

That’s the kind of work Cassian does. The work he _can_ do. It isn’t something that everyone can do.

Cassian is twenty-two years old.

He looks back up at Draven, meets the man’s hard eyes unflinchingly.

“Yes, sir,” he says.

Draven smiles.

Cassian sells his soul to the Rebellion.

He suspects he is damning himself for it, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The family background offered by Travia Chan in this chapter was made-up.
> 
> You probably remember Draven from ROGUE ONE: he's Cassian's superior officer, who orders him to kill Galen Erso. There is no canon info on where he is from, or where he started out in the Alliance, so in this story, he's from the Corellian Resistance, as is Melshi.
> 
> PSA/NOTE ON UPCOMING CHAPTERS: this story will dive into the early days and formation of the Rebel Alliance. The resources and stories I am drawing upon are all based in Old EU canon, and I've updated the tags on this story to reflect that. This means it might possibly run against events that occur in the current Disney EU canon. My reasoning for using the Old EU is as follows: 1) I prefer the Old EU to the newer stuff, 2) I know the Old EU much better, and 3) the current Disney EU is still being written/changed, while the Old EU is set as it is, meaning there is much more info available. This does mean that I have to tweak some of it, because ROGUE ONE kinda shot some of the Old EU in the foot, in terms of how the Death Star plans were first discovered, and recovered. And the Old EU did occasionally overlap/discredit itself. I will note when I've changed Old EU stories due to any of this.
> 
> There's also the fact that Cassian Andor was definitely written as a character who could've just stepped out of the Old EU, what with his Fest background, and "Aach". ROGUE ONE itself had a very 1970s New Hollywood Cinema vibe, a la the original STAR WARS, and I wanted to reflect that, too.
> 
> The main point is, I've relied largely on "The Rebel Alliance Sourcebook" from the 1990s for the history of Fest, Mantooine, and the early days of the Alliance, and the Legends (and not canon) pages of Wookieepedia to help fill in the blanks on Galactic History, as well as planet descriptions. So if you read something and think "REBELS discredited this last month", well, I know, and I don't care. I picked from the Old EU instead.


	34. Catalyze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-two years old, and a secret operative for the Rebellion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CATALYZE, a verb: cause or accelerate a reaction by acting as a catalyst.
> 
> CATALYZE, a verb: cause an action/process to begin.

Cassian is twenty-two years old, and a secret operative for the Rebellion.

Draven puts him to work right away. He begins by showing Cassian the base for the Corellian Resistance group, and introduces him to a handful of rebels working there. They all look at Cassian with some incredulity, but once Asori’s name is dropped, they brighten, warming to Cassian, looking at him with newfound respect.

Asori Joshi continues to influence and guide Cassian’s life, even when he hasn’t seen her in almost two years.

Cassian learns that Draven runs a small, under-the-radar unit within the Corellian Resistance. He only has three other men working directly under him, and Cassian doesn’t get to meet them. Secrecy is of the utmost importance to Draven, and he warns Cassian that he cannot tell anyone the specifics of his missions and work for Draven, that he’ll supply intelligence, orchestrate bombings, and complete assassinations, and no one will know who was responsible.

“Can you accept that?” Draven asks, one eyebrow raised, daring Cassian to say no.

Cassian accepts it. He spent years in the Coruscant Rebellion with barely anyone knowing the work he was doing. This will be no different.

But it _is_ different.

Draven wasn’t kidding about working in the shadows. He sends Cassian on scouting missions around Corellia, breaking into Imperial buildings, killing officers in dark alleys, planting poisons. They are black ops, more or less.

No one else knows about them, and that includes the head of the Corellian Resistance.

The unofficial leader of the Corellian Resistance is the Corellian Imperial Senator, Garm Bel Iblis, but he isn’t around much.

Draven finds this completely unacceptable, and never hesitates to go on long rants when reminded of Bel Iblis’ absence.

“He prefers to remain on Coruscant, trying to pass peaceful legislation in the kriffing _Imperial Senate_ ,” Draven snaps in one of his many diatribes. “It doesn’t help that his wife is an Imperial loyalist. He knows that moving against her with the Resistance would cause her to leave him, and take the children, and he’s decided that’s a bridge too far. It isn’t a _sacrifice_ worth making.”

Cassian understands and agrees with Draven’s anger. He finds Bel Iblis’ point of view mind-boggling; Cassian is someone who has sacrificed his body, his conscience, his honor, and his morality for the Rebellion, time and time again. He thinks of Taraja, and Wada, and Nerezza, who all gave their lives for the Rebellion, and feels sick.

The Corellian Resistance is ready to expand. They have some contact with the Coruscant Rebellion, and now they have information on the Fest Rebellion and the Mantooine Liberators, with Cassian among their number. But they can’t move without their leader, without his support, his significance to Corellia as a whole. Bel Iblis is regarded as a hero among Corellians; he kept them out of the Clone Wars for years, and saved millions of lives in doing so.

Moving against him is an impossibility.

But it might be _necessary_. It needs to happen, if the Rebellion is to take its next, big step towards galaxy-wide legitimization.

Cassian watches Draven spend weeks and months agonizing over his options. He confers with the other Corellian Resistance leaders, culminating in shouting matches that pour through the corridors, inviting debate and comment among the rebels.

Cassian doesn’t have a team to spend time with, so he lingers among the other Corellian rebels, including Melshi, who is probably his closest friend on the planet.

“What do you think he’s going to do?” Melshi asks, as he and Cassian play sabacc in the cafeteria, yelling coming from the office around the corner.

Cassian shrugs, looking at the cards in his hand. “I don’t know.”

“You’ll know before I do, that’s for sure.”

Melshi is right.

A week later, Draven approaches Cassian and tells him they’re going to Alderaan.

* * *

Alderaan is breathtaking.

The planet is lush, covered in beautiful mountains, crystalline lakes, dense forests, and open plains. Cassian can practically taste the cleanness of the air on his tongue the moment the ship breaks through the thin layer of clouds that covers the planet. He breathes deeply, and smiles.

“It isn’t called ‘the planet of beauty’ for nothing,” Draven says.

Draven flies them to the Royal Palace of Alderaan, where they are to meet with Bail Organa. Cassian thinks holding this meeting between rebels and a government official inside the actual palace is an incredibly gutsy move, but Draven has restated what Taraja had told Cassian, which is that while Alderaan is known as being resistant to the Empire, it’s also a peaceful planet, and is entirely uninterested in declaring outright war.

(At this time, at least.)

The Royal Palace is set into the side of one of Alderaan’s many exquisite mountains, just outside the capital city of Aldera. It shimmers in the sunlight, its metallic facade blending in almost completely with the brilliantly white snow.

Fest had snow, lots of it, but Cassian thinks that Alderaanian snow is somehow prettier, though he’s quite certain it’s made of the same stuff.

Still, he walks slowly behind Draven, staring at it.

Draven notices, and clears his throat impatiently.

“Stop loitering,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll come back to Alderaan plenty of times after this. You can stare at the snow then.”

Cassian walks more quickly after that.

(Alderaan will be destroyed in four years.)

(Cassian will not live to know of its destruction.)

A palace attendant lets them into a magnificent office, overlooking a lake so clear that it reflects the soft clouds in the sky, like a perfect oil painting. The room is dominated by a large desk, a few chairs, and, of all things, an aquarium, filled with sea creatures and fish in a wide spectrum of colors.

It immediately grabs Cassian’s attention, and he stares.

“My daughter loves the fish.”

The voice comes from the man in the room. He’s taller than Cassian by several inches, with warm brown skin, dark hair, and kind eyes. He’s dressed in flowing navy blue robes, and he smiles at his visitors, bowing slightly in greeting, which Cassian finds to be extremely unnecessary.

“Senator Organa,” Draven says, striding forward. “A pleasure to see you again. Thank you for meeting with us.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Bail Organa says, his accent glossing the words.

“This is Cassian Andor,” Draven says, beckoning Cassian forward. “He’s recently joined our Resistance, a transplant from the Coruscant Rebellion.”

Organa nods at Cassian, the warmth in his eyes almost too much. Cassian expects he’s a fantastic politician. “It’s nice to meet you, Cassian Andor.”

“And you too, Senator,” Cassian says, shaking Organa’s hand.

“Please, sit,” Organa says, gesturing to the chairs.

He returns to his seat behind the desk, as Cassian and Draven take the chairs in front of it. Organa shuffles through the maps and papers lining the desk, brushing them aside to procure a datapad.

“I understand you have some… frustrations, with Garm.”

“Sir,” Draven says, voice already testy, only restraining himself because of who he’s speaking to. “He refuses to help us, or authorize us, to expand from Corellia to other worlds. We haven’t even been allowed to open communications with the other planets in our sector, to seek out Resistance groups there. He’s completely hobbled us, and it’s making my soldiers question what we’re even doing.”

Organa looks pained at this. “You must understand, Garm is in a difficult position. He’s an Imperial senator, he has obligations--”

“But sir, you are also a senator, and yet you still find time to work with and aide your Resistance,” Draven says, the urgency in his voice interrupting Organa. “And you’ve expressed interest in expansion, and there are so many systems ready to go! Andor has been to several in the Outer Rim.”

Organa’s eyes flicker to Cassian, questioning.

“I grew up on Fest, Senator, in the Atrivis Sector,” Cassian says. “There’s an incredible Rebellion group there, run by a woman called Travia Chan. She’s done amazing work. Further out in the sector is Mantooine, and they also have a successful group, with the Mantooine Liberators.”

“And Andor’s worked with Asori Joshi, on Coruscant,” Draven says. “He was a spy inside the Empire for her there. And she says the Coruscant Rebellion is ready and willing to connect with other Core Worlds, including Alderaan, and Corellia.”

Organa nods. “Yes, I’ve met with Asori. She’s an excellent ally.”

Cassian is beginning to think Asori has met with every rebel in the galaxy in the years since he left Coruscant.

“It sounds like you are too,” Organa says, looking at Cassian thoughtfully. “I wonder--”

He’s interrupted, by his office door bursting open.

A teenage girl stands there, hovering in the doorway. She has long brown hair arranged in stylish braids, and big dark brown eyes. Her skin is smooth and pale, roses and cream, and she’s dressed in a white tunic with tall black boots.

“Sorry, Papa,” she says.

“Leia, I told you--”

“I know, it’s just, the ship outside,” she says, and Cassian sees now that she’s a little breathless. “There’s something wrong with it, one of the attendants asked me to find the men it belongs to.”

“Kriff,” Draven mutters. “Andor, would you--”

“Yes sir,” Cassian says quickly. He gets to his feet and walks towards the girl, who holds the door for him.

He sets off down the hall, and hears the door close behind him, followed by the noise of running feet. A hand snags his elbow and tugs him down a different hall, and Cassian turns, unsurprised to see the girl dragging him.

“What are you--”

“This way,” she snaps.

He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t argue. He thinks it might be the inherent authority in the girl’s voice, the way her eyes are narrowed in focus, her mouth a thin line brokering no argument.

He is a little curious as to what this could be about.

The girl leads him through a series of corridors, until they reach a small room, filled floor to ceiling with books, covering almost every available surface, including a handful of ornamental tables and stools. Cassian stands in the middle of the room, looking around, as the girl closes the door behind them.

“Now,” she says, stalking towards him. She’s much shorter than him, almost an entire foot shorter. He stares down at her, an eyebrow raised.

“Who are you?” She asks. “What’s a Corellian rebel doing on Alderaan?”

“You’re Senator Organa’s daughter,” Cassian says. “The Princess.”

He wonders if she expects him to bow to her, but from the determined way she’s eyeing him now, he suspects the gesture would only make her angry.

She huffs. “Of course I am. Who else would I be?”

“A rebel.”

The girl pauses, and there’s an uncertainty in her brown eyes now, the first he’s seen from her. “No,” she says. “I’m not. Well not yet, I guess.”

“You know of the Rebellion.”

“ _Barely_ ,” she says, scornful. “I only know what my friends tell me, or what I overhear my parents talk about.”

“Is that why you loiter outside your father’s office door? It was a good ruse.”

“Ruse? Hey, buddy, there actually _is_ something wrong with your ship.”

“What the hell did you do to it?”

She shrugs. “Nothing irreparable. He’ll give you an Alderaanian ship so you aren’t stuck here.” She pauses, and adds, “But if you tell him what I did, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?”

She scowls. “You still haven’t told me your name.”

Cassian smiles, and decides to take pity on her. He holds out his hand. “Cassian Andor.”

The girl accepts his handshake. “Leia Organa.”

Cassian nods, and surveys the room they’re standing in, the books lining the walls and floors. “This is a nice library. Is it yours?”

“Yes,” Leia says. “I’m taking my final exams right now. I’m going to the University of Alderaan next year.”

“Wow. Congratulations.”

“Like _you_ care about the university. What are _you_ doing on Alderaan?”

Cassian turns back around to face her. “My superior and I have a meeting with your father.”

“About what?”

“I think you already know what.”

Leia frowns. “I… I don’t know. Not for sure. I want you to tell me.”

“Your father should be the one to tell you. If he hasn’t, he has a reason not to. I’m not getting involved.” Cassian pauses. “How old are you?”

“I’m fifteen.”

“You aren’t of age. You’re still a child.”

Leia looks offended. “Yeah? What were you doing when you were fifteen?”

Cassian pauses. He thinks about meeting Asori, and going to the Royal Imperial Academy. He remembers Gallamby, Atheenia, Isa, and Casher. He remembers climbing through the Coruscant Underworld. He remembers Wada.

Some of this must come across his face, for Leia looks gratified.

“See? That’s no excuse.”

“It is when a father wants to protect his child,” Cassian says. “It’s the best reason there is.”

“ _Your_ father didn’t keep his work hidden from you.”

Cassian laughs. “You assume a lot about me, for having just met me.”

“I know your type.”

“My type?”

“Yeah,” Leia says. “The nomadic, dark, and brooding type. The pilots and smugglers who come in from deep space, with… Old, blasted-up ships, and nothing to their name. All they think about are ghosts, and where they’re going to go next. I’ve talked to them around the Port.”

“And you think I’m like them,” Cassian says.

Leia shrugs. “If the boot fits.”

“Should I be offended?”

“Why were you talking about Garm Bel Iblis?”

“He’s the senator from Corellia,” Cassian says. “We’re from Corellia. Your father knows him. We’re passing on a message.”

“ _Sithspit_.”

Cassian laughs at the harsh language. “Sorry, Princess.”

“Ugh, if you’re going to call me that, at least try not to sound _too_ condescending. A normal amount is acceptable.”

She reminds Cassian of Taraja, and K-2SO, simultaneously. He almost wishes K-2SO hadn’t been left behind on Corellia, so he could have his wits matched with a fifteen-year-old Alderaanian girl.

He definitely wishes Taraja could meet this girl.

“You remind me of someone I used to know,” Cassian says.

He isn’t being nostalgic. He’s trying to steer the conversation away from Bel Iblis, and Organa’s work with the Rebellion, work that his daughter doesn’t seem to know a lot about.

The topic change works. Leia frowns, unused to Cassian volunteering discussion.

“Yeah? Was she pretty?”

Cassian laughs again. “Uh, yeah, she was. Very pretty. You’re pretty too, but you don’t look a thing like her. You have a fire like she did though, and that’s what reminds me of her.”

Leia’s lips twist, considering this. “I’ve heard that before.”

“It’s a good thing.”

“Not always.”

“Trust me,” Cassian says. “It is.”

Leia eyes him, thoughtful. Cassian looks at the chronometer hanging on the wall.

“I should be getting back,” he says. “Goodbye, Princess.”

He walks to the door, but Leia’s voice stops him.

“Will you still be in the Rebellion in two years?”

Cassian pauses, hand on the door, and turns back around. “I’m sorry?”

“I’ll be of age in two years,” Leia says. “And I’ll want to join the Rebellion. Or whatever it is you people call yourselves.”

That is exactly what they call themselves. Cassian nods, frowning a little.

“If I’m still alive, I will be.”

Leia nods back. “Okay. How do I get in touch with you?”

“I think your father--”

“You just said my father wants to protect me,” Leia says. “He won’t tell me where the real action is, where the battles are. What if I want to get involved with _those?_ What if I really want to help?”

Cassian hesitates. She notices.

“You _just said_ that you wouldn’t tell me because I’m a child, but I’ll be seventeen, and of age, so--”

“You’re right,” he says, sighing. “You’re right.”

But she’s the Princess of Alderaan, not the daughter of some unknown Alderaanian merchant.

“I did give you my name,” Cassian hedges.

“It’s your real name?”

“Why would I lie to you?”

Leia scowls. “I’m pretty sure you’ve been lying this whole time.”

“Only a little,” Cassian says.

“Will you even still be going by your real name in two years?” Leia asks. “Spies are always using code names.”

Cassian blinks. “Why do you think I’m a spy?”

“I literally heard your boss tell my father. I’m not a kriffing _moron_.”

Draven had said Cassian had been a spy for the Rebellion on Coruscant.

“I don’t have any aliases at the moment,” he tells Leia.

(Joreth Sward is dead.)

Leia considers this, tapping a finger to her chin. “Okay. Then I’ll have to make one up for you.”

Cassian snorts. “Princess, that’s not how--”

“It’s just a _name_ ,” she says. “So I can find you in two years, if I decide to. I’m not interested in going on a wild Galoomp chase to find some random twenty-something rebel spy who doesn’t use his real name anymore. And I definitely wouldn’t want to out you, or anything.”

“I’m twenty-two,” Cassian says. He considers her words and acquiesces, nodding, because he thinks she has a point and also because he really needs to be getting back to Draven and Organa. “What’s the name?”

“Aach.”

“I… What?”

“Aach,” Leia says again, exaggeratedly for Cassian’s benefit. “It’s the name of an Alderaanian man I just read about.”

“What was he known for?”

She shrugs. “Not much, really. He was the guy who warned Alderaan that Cassus Fett was coming to attack us during the Mandalorian Wars. He just barely managed to send a warning message before he was caught and executed by the Mandalorians.”

Cassian stares at her. “Pleasant.”

“He was brave. He did a really good thing.”

“Really good,” Cassian repeats. “Aach. Okay, fine. If I ever hear that someone’s looking for Aach, I’ll know it’s me.”

Leia beams. “Good.”

She goes to Cassian, and holds out her hand again, and they shake on it.

“It was nice to talk to you, Cassian Andor,” Leia says. “Aach.”

“You, too… What do they call you here? Princess Leia?”

Leia scowls. “Ugh. They do. But I prefer to go by Leia. Please.”

Fest doesn’t have a monarchy, and Coruscant doesn’t either, so perhaps this is why Cassian finds it easy to agree to the familiarity, and buck the title.

“All right. Leia.”

He opens the door and is halfway down the hall when she calls back to him.

“See you in two years!”

He’s smiling as he goes to find out what Leia has done to the ship.

* * *

Cassian has missed the majority of the meeting between Draven and Organa, and is only present for the last ten minutes of it, which mostly consists of Organa apologizing for not having any clear-cut solution, but offering that a woman called Mon Mothma, a senator from Chandrila, might be able to come up with an idea.

“She’s young, and idealistic,” Organa says. “But she’s been speaking of open rebellion for many years now, and has expressed interest in uniting various rebel groups. Perhaps she can talk some sense into Garm.”

Draven nods. “I will speak to the other leaders on Corellia. We’ll make contact with her.”

“And when you do see Garm next,” Organa says, “Tell him that he should send a few rebels to Darkknell. I’ve heard rumors that some strange intelligence has been coming from there.”

“Of course, Senator,” Draven says, and that’s that.

Organa does give them an Alderaanian ship to leave the planet, as Leia had predicted. Cassian follows Draven inside, mind bursting with questions as to what all was discussed at the meeting. He settles into the co-pilot’s chair, and sets coordinates for Corellia, when Draven interrupts his thoughts.

“No. We’re going to Anchoron, Andor.”

Anchoron is far from Alderaan, in the Outer Rim, and it will take them a few hours to reach it.

“Yes sir,” Cassian says, now impossibly more curious as to what Organa said.

He waits until they’ve made the jump to lightspeed before he speaks.

“Sir, what all did Senator Organa say?”

Draven shakes his head, eyes downcast. Cassian notices that Draven’s hands are white-knuckled, and there are additional worry lines around his eyes. He’s thinking very seriously about something, and Cassian is visited by a rush of foreboding.

He has a bad feeling about this.

Just like he did before Gallamby instructed him to murder the prisoners at Lemniscate.

“Andor,” Draven says, voice quiet and halting. “You and I are going to have to do something reprehensible, if the Corellian Resistance is to survive. If open rebellion is to truly come to this galaxy, if we are to make a real claim against the Empire. You and I must do something unquestionably terrible.”

“What is it, sir?”

“No one can ever know it was us, Andor. _No one_. We’d be hanged if anyone found out, of course, but the Corellian Resistance would also fall with us. Do you understand?”

Cassian swallows, and nods. “Yes, sir.”

Cassian is twenty-two years old.

Draven looks at him then, studying Cassian’s face, searching for hesitancy and uncertainty.

He finds none.

Cassian has sold his soul to this cause; he won’t scrabble for a moral high ground now.

“We’re going to kill Garm Bel Iblis’ family,” Draven says.

* * *

In the end, the plan is shockingly simple.

Bel Iblis is currently on Anchoron, planning to give a speech at the Treitamma Political Center, on democracy and the Old Republic. It is a gutsy move, dancing on the line of rebellious, and there is likely to be a delegation of Imperial officials present to make sure he does not stray too far, that he does not say something the Empire can construe as treasonous. The threat of Imperial retaliation will be very real, and this is critical.

Also present for the speech will be Bel Iblis’ Imperial wife, Arrianya, and their two children.

Cassian will send Bel Iblis a message, posing as a messenger for Bail Organa, and get Bel Iblis to exit the Political Center, and meet him at a safe spot a few blocks away.

The plan is that Draven, along with the three other men he has working in his black operations unit that Cassian is also a part of, who are now on their way to rendezvous with Cassian and Draven on Anchoron, will blow up the building. They will kill everyone inside, including Bel Iblis’ family.

It is _essential_ that Bel Iblis’ family die.

This will be the catalyst that pushes Bel Iblis to the Rebellion. It will make him devote himself to the cause, to fight tooth and nail, to urgently move to hold meetings with Organa and Mothma, to help shape and guide the burgeoning rebellions across the galaxy to become something bigger than they are now.

Because Bel Iblis will see the destroyed Political Center, will know his family has died, will remember the Empire’s hatred for him and his beliefs, and will come to the reasonable conclusion that the Empire has attempted to assassinate him.

It is an easy, understandable conclusion.

Because the Rebellion would _never_ do something like this.

They’d never murder a man’s family to get him to join the cause.

( _The Rebellion would never destroy someone’s humanity to create a lethal killing machine_.)

(Cassian knows, better than most, that this is just not true.)

This is why it is so critical that no one ever find out who was really responsible for bombing the Treitamma Political Center, and murdering Garm Bel Iblis’ family. Because then no one would feel comfortable joining the Rebellion, and fighting the Empire.

(Because, maybe, the Rebellion isn’t better than the Empire.)

(Cassian thinks this thought, and then banishes it to the corners of his mind.)

He follows Draven’s directions. He helps rig the Political Center with detonite.

He sends a message to Bel Iblis, and, with Alderaan and knowing he’s posing as a messenger for Bail Organa in mind, he signs it as Aach.

He thinks of Leia Organa, fifteen years old, eager and vital, and he hopes she chooses not to find him, and the Rebellion, in two years. He doesn’t want to see that brand of idealistic youth compromised; he knows how fragile it is.

Bel Iblis has no reason to doubt Cassian’s message. He is unsuspicious when he approaches Cassian in a side alley on Anchoron, the Political Center a dark monolithic building behind him.

“Are you Aach?” He asks, butchering the name, not saying it with a fluidity and near-reverence that Leia had when she’d talked of the fallen Alderaanian hero. “Organa’s messenger?”

“Yes, I am,” Cassian says.

“What’s the message?”

“He requests that you send a few rebels to Darkknell,” Cassian says. He figures he might as well pass on Organa’s message while he’s got Bel Iblis. “He says he’s heard some troubling reports of… the Empire building some kind of… weapon.”

He’s embellishing a bit; Organa gave no such details. But he needs to stall Bel Iblis, keep him interested.

“What kind of weapon?”

“We aren’t sure, we--”

Cassian’s voice is drowned out by a series of deafening explosions. He looks over Bel Iblis’ shoulder, and watches the Treitamma Political Center crumble, vanishing into a huge cloud of gray smoke, showering everyone near, including Cassian and Bel Iblis, with a layer of gray ash.

Cassian jumps forward, using his body to cover Bel Iblis, to ensure the man survives, should any scraps of the building fly out of the sky towards them.

They _need_ him. He needs to live to see this.

A minute or so passes, the only noises coming from the Political Center, which is settling into the earth, completely demolished and smoldering in places.

Bel Iblis looks up, and sees that the building is gone.

He makes the most peculiar sound. It’s a whimper, and a moan, and he falls to his knees, there in the alley.

He’s seen the building fall, and he knows that it means his family, his wife and two children, are dead.

Cassian stares down at the weeping man, the hero of Corellia, the beloved leader. Bel Iblis is shorter than Cassian, with gray hair that falls to his shoulders, and an impressive gray moustache above his lip. He is much older than Cassian, has arguably seen and experienced more, but in this moment, Cassian could not relate to him more.

Cassian has looked like that, plenty of times.

The last time being, of course, on the way to Mantooine, when he realized Taraja was dead.

He springs to action.

“Senator,” Cassian says hurriedly, dropping to his knees beside the sobbing man. “Senator, we have to hurry. The Empire will realize you weren’t in the building, they’ll start looking for you. We have to move.”

“My children, my wife, we have to go back, we have to look--”

“Senator,” Cassian says, voice sharp and fierce in a way he only could have learned from his time at the Academy. “Senator, your family is _dead_. No one could have survived that blast, that building collapsing. There’s nothing to be done for them. I’m sorry, but they’re gone.”

He’s harsh, and he’s mean. But he’s also telling the truth.

(The bigger truth, the truer truth, is that Bel Iblis’ family is dead because of Cassian. Because of Draven, and the black operations team. Because of the Rebellion. _For_ the Rebellion.)

It takes some coaching, but Bel Iblis gets to his feet. When he stands, his brown eyes are clear. Devastated, but clear.

It is a kind of bravery Cassian has not seen frequently.

“Where’s your ship?” Bel Iblis asks.

Cassian takes him to the Alderaanian ship. It legitimizes his role as an Alderaanian messenger, but he thinks that Bel Iblis is far too distraught right now to question any type of ship Cassian might have arrived in.

“I can’t go with you, Senator,” Cassian says, watching Bel Iblis settle in. “I have to stay here, to investigate the bombing. But you need to take this ship, and you need to go into hiding. The Empire must not know you survived.”

Bel Iblis nods. “I understand.” He pauses, and adds, “Darkknell, you said?”

Cassian hesitates. “Yes. But, Senator, you don’t have to go. I can find someone else--”

“No,” Bel Iblis says, and his voice is pure, uncontaminated steel. He’s resolute, and resilient. Cassian is impressed. “No, I… I need something to do. If I stay still too long, or think, I…”

He shakes his head.

Cassian understands.

He knows that loss makes you want to run, and to do something, _anything_.

It’s what Cassian has spent most of his life running from.

“Yes, Senator,” he says, nodding.

“Besides,” Bel Iblis says, looking at Cassian again. “You were tough, but… Driven, back there. A good man to have in a crisis. I imagine Bail is going to need you again, sooner rather than later.”

Cassian is a little thrown by this generous description of his character.

He knows Bel Iblis would not be saying it if he knew what Cassian had done, why he was really on Anchoron.

“Thank you, Senator,” he murmurs.

Bel Iblis nods, readying the ship for take-off. Cassian disembarks the ship, but lingers on the platform, staying until the Alderaanian ship has shot off into the sky, headed for Darkknell and whatever Organa might have heard rumors of there.

(What’s on Darkknell is an early warning sign of the thing that will cause Cassian Andor’s death.)

(But he has no idea.)

(None of them do, none of them will, until it is too late.)

Cassian walks back into the city, meeting up with Draven again.

“Is he safe?” Draven asks.

“Off-planet, on the Alderaanian ship,” Cassian reports. “Headed to Darkknell.”

Draven raises an eyebrow.

“He wants to work, sir,” Cassian says.

A slow, lethal smile splits Draven’s face.

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

He looks away, surveying the street, watching the emergency crews and aid workers rushing to the still burning remains of the building he has just bombed, filled with the bodies of hundreds of the dead, including Bel Iblis’ wife and children.

Cassian clenches his fists tightly, holding himself together.

_It’s for the Rebellion. For the good of the Rebellion._

_Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion._

_I’m justified_.

“Good work, Andor,” Draven says at last. “Very good indeed. Now let’s find a ship and get back to Corellia. We have a lot of work to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went back and forth, for a while, on whether or not to include Leia Organa in this story. Eventually, the temptation to write my favorite STAR WARS character of all time was too much, and so she's here. (She makes one more appearance in this story later on too.) In all likelihood, Cassian Andor and Leia Organa never met.
> 
> Bail Organa did have an aquarium in his office on Alderaan, which is my absolute favorite Old EU tidbit. Leia did go to the University of Alderaan. It is a little unclear how much she knew, at 15, about the Rebellion, and her father's work, but I can't imagine her NOT knowing.
> 
> "Aach" is a canon alias for Cassian Andor, though like all his others, there is no info on where/how/why/when he used it. I made up Leia giving it to him, as well as the Alderaanian man called Aach. Cassus Fett did attack Alderaan during the Mandalorian Wars, but no one called Aach warned Alderaan about it. You can easily see how/why I came up with that story for Aach/Cassian, though.
> 
> Here's the big thing: the latter half of this chapter is based off of a four part Old EU novella from the 1990s called INTERLUDE AT DARKKNELL. It's about Garm Bel Iblis, how his family was killed on Anchoron, and how he went to Darkknell, on the run from the Empire. it is no longer canon BUT, he is given a message about Darkknell by someone claiming to be a messenger for Organa, called "Aach". THE VISUAL GUIDE TO ROGUE ONE comes out, and "Aach" is an alias for Cassian Andor. I took this to mean that we are to assume Cassian Andor was Aach from the DARKKNELL novella, even though the DARKKNELL stories are no longer canon.
> 
> Anyway the novella apparently lightly suggests (and I don't know how it does this) that it was not the Empire, but the Rebels that bombed the Political Center and killed Bel Iblis' family. The Rebels have a lot to gain from this, as I described, so I'd buy it. The timing of the novella is suspect; some say it happened 0 BBY, but Garm Bel Iblis was HELLA involved with the Alliance at that point, and not on the fence, like he was in the novella. I've set it as taking place here, 4 BBY, instead.
> 
> In the novella, Garm Bel Iblis finds the earliest sketches of the Death Star on Darkknell. I think we can safely say this has been retconned away by ROGUE ONE; because Darkknell was where the Alliance first hears about the Death Star in the Old EU, and they had absolutely no idea in ROGUE ONE. so I've just kinda made it a middle ground here where the Death Star is a vague idea of a thing, as it is throughout this story. If anything, you can look at this chapter as my tribute to the stories of the Old EU, and you can probably consider Cassian Andor being part of the DARKKNELL stories as an acknowledgement of the Old EU from the current EU folks.


	35. Mirror Images

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-three years old when he goes to Jedha for the first time.

Cassian is twenty-three years old when he goes to Jedha for the first time.

He’s been dispatched to Jedha to act as an envoy of sorts, to attempt to check in with the militant leader Saw Gerrera and his group of rebel insurgents, the Partisans. Cassian has read dozens of reports on Gerrera and the Partisans, and the kindest thing he can say about them is that they are aptly named.

He’s set to meet Gerrera and the Partisans on the cold moon of Jedha, where the group has taken a pause in their travels, to rest, and reconnoiter. Gerrera and the Partisans are constantly on the move, have been ever since they single-handedly succeeded in removing Imperial forces from Gerrera’s homeworld of Onderon.  It is an incredible achievement, particularly in Cassian’s eyes, having witnessed rebels on Fest devote almost two decades now to unhinging the Empire’s grip on the planet, without any conclusive success.

Draven is extremely interested in what Gerrera and the Partisans are doing next. He’s met Gerrera before, just once, and he found the man to be intimidating, but cunning, and brilliant.

Gerrera is barbarous, and unyielding. His methods have been described in reports as “unsavory”, “questionable”, and even “unacceptable”. Cassian has read between the lines and determined that idealistic Rebellion leaders like Bail Organa, and likely Mon Mothma (who Cassian has not yet met, as she’s been on the run from the Empire since she learned of an attempt to arrest her; in the time since, she’s been traveling, meeting various Rebellion groups across the galaxy) find Gerrera to be unpalatable and difficult, while unflinching military men like Draven think they might have something to learn from Gerrera’s ways.

Cassian isn’t yet sure where he’ll fall, but he has a guess that he’ll align himself with Draven. He always does.

It isn’t a bad thing, he thinks, but it does say a lot about who Cassian is.

It says he’s cutthroat. Resolved. Undaunted.

Lethal, and unconcerned with what heinous acts he needs to commit for the Rebellion.

Cassian has spent years, most of his adolescence, pretending that he is anything but this cruel, killing man he really is. It is only now, as a full-blown assassin, messenger, thief, and spy, that he accepts who he is.

He isn’t good. He understands.

He’s okay with it.

More or less.

Cassian guides his ship over Jedha, staring down at the moon. It’s covered in orange sand and brown rock, all desert and frost. It looks almost like the features of Fest and Mantooine have been thrown together, at a single moon, and Cassian finds it more inviting than he really should.

K-2SO is not with him at the moment; he’s been assigned to aid a rebel group on Corellia in raiding a weapons manufacturing compound. Cassian misses him, and finds himself wishing he could’ve come along, if only to hear whatever irritated comment K-2SO would’ve made at the cold of Jedha, since the two of them have been based on Corellia, a much warmer place, for over a year.

But K-2SO isn’t here. Cassian is on his own.

He’s had plenty of solo missions before, but this is his first solo mission that’s taken him off-planet. He expects it’s a mark of trust from Draven, an indicator that Cassian has passed whatever under-the-radar tests Draven has secretly thrown at him since Cassian joined his black ops team. He’s glad for the confidence, but a little irritated that it’s taken so long.

Garm Bel Iblis is more devoted to the Rebellion than ever before.

He works in the shadows now, has to, since the Empire believes him to be dead. Most of Corellia does too, and Cassian has been witness to hundreds of elaborate public memorials and send-offs. He feels a sense of guilt in his stomach whenever he encounters such a display, but works to dispel it. He has work to do; they’ll find out Bel Iblis is alive when the time is right.

He hasn’t seen Bel Iblis since he put him in the Alderaanian ship. But Draven has heard reports, via the rebel agents who’ve encountered him in hiding, that he’s withdrawn, and sullen. He’s in deep mourning for his family, even as he works to rally rebels across the galaxy.

These details are small, and easily overlooked, but Cassian thinks about them constantly, often having his sleep interrupted by the sound of Bel Iblis’ grief, when he saw the Political Center fall, playing on a loop in his head.

The mission was a success. Bel Iblis’ family is dead. Bel Iblis is devoted to the cause now.

Cassian wishes it was something he could feel good about. Or at least put out of his mind for good.

He lands in Jedha City.

The Holy City is densely crowded, with merchants, shopkeepers, patrons, children, restaurant workers, mechanics, and everyone in between. The city is located atop a mesa, and walled on all sides, protecting its inhabitants from the harsh desert winds that blow around the moon.

Cassian finds himself to be surprisingly cold, and he hesitates before exiting his ship. The moon is colder than he anticipated, and he only has his jacket, a tan Corellian-cut field jacket. The jacket is lightweight but sturdy, and has a small compartment on the sleeve that perfectly fits the suicide pill Draven had given him when he’d first agreed to join his team.

The pill is small, and a dark purple that often appears black in the light. It is unobtrusive, and unnoticeable, but deadly. Cassian only has to bite down on it to send its poison running into his system, to end his life. It would be quick.

The suicide pill is referred to by many Resistance fighters as a lullaby. Cassian doesn’t know who came up with the term, but he finds it to be accurate.

The poison will put you to sleep. Swiftly, and painlessly.

Cassian lingers in the opening of the ship, and considers the cold. He opens his traveling bag, hanging off his shoulder, and digs through it. He finds Taraja’s old scarf, the scarf that is no longer purple but a dark and stained gray, and he wraps it around his head and shoulders.

It isn’t much, but it’ll help.

The simple sight of the scarf has always inspired warmth in Cassian.

He sets off into Jedha.

He’s surrounded on all sides by chatter and conversation, in languages he doesn’t understand, and it almost reminds Cassian of the Coruscant Underworld, of spending hours walking through thick crowds and dodging down side alleys, climbing ladders to escape Coruscanti police and stormtroopers, laughing with whoever was running with him, whether it was Wada, Ethan, or Taraja.

He thinks of how they’re all gone now, and feels a wave of melancholy pass over him.

He needs to stop reminding himself of the past, of the people he’s lost. They don’t let him move forward.

Cassian adjusts the scarf around his face and keeps walking.

He’s made contact with an operative of Gerrera’s in the last few months, having gotten in touch with the man thanks to a mutual friend, a bounty hunter Cassian had recruited for the Resistance on Corellia. The irony of recruiting a bounty hunter had not been lost on Cassian; he continues to have bizarrely good luck when it comes to bounty hunters, considering Gwen had been one he’d known on Fest who’d led him to Atheenia, who’d led him to the Coruscant Rebellion.

He hopes the man who the Corellian bounty hunter has brought him to leads him on to something better as well.

He walks into Gesh’s Tapcafe, where his contact has asked him to meet him. The tapcafe is small, is basically a cantina, but with more food. Cassian hovers in the doorway, looking around, wondering if he can spot his contact without having met him before.

He sees a bearded man working behind the front counter, and approaches him, noticing that the man wears a name tag on the front of his apron, naming him as Gesh, likely then the owner of this tapcafe.

“Excuse me,” he murmurs. “I’m looking for Tivik. Do you know him?”

The man nods, staring hard at Cassian’s face, memorizing his features in a way that makes Cassian very uncomfortable. “He’s over there.”

Cassian turns around, and spots a nervous-looking man with curly dark hair and a thick beard, tapping his leg against the ground and staring hard out the main window of the tapcafe.

Cassian almost laughs at how obvious the man is.

“Thank you,” he murmurs to Gesh, who nods again.

Cassian walks over to Tivik, sliding into the chair opposite him. The man jumps, turning his head and blinking at Cassian.

“Are you Andor?” He asks.

“Yes. You must be Tivik,” Cassian says, holding his hand out over the table. The man takes it, his palm a little clammy.

Tivik nods. “Yeah. ‘S me.”

“You can introduce me to Saw Gerrera?” Cassian checks. The man is practically sweating his skin off.

“Aye,” Tivik says. “I told him about you. He wants to meet you.”

“He _wants_ to meet me? What did you say?”

“Just that you’re with the Resistance,” Tivik says. “He hasn’t heard from anyone affiliated with an official Resistance group in a while, so.”

Cassian nods. “Okay. Is he ready now?”

“Yeah, lemme just…” Tivik looks over Cassian’s shoulder and jerks his head. Cassian turns, and spots a woman, with the same dark hair as Tivik and wearing an apron, nod back. He watches as she tugs the apron over her head, setting it on the counter, and walks towards the table, stopping next to it.

“This is my sister, Tela,” Tivik says. “She’s a Partisan, too. Tela, this is Andor. He’s with the Corellian Resistance.”

“Hello,” Tela says, nodding at Cassian. Her eyes are a muddy brown, and framed by black paint of some kind, similar he thinks to the blue paint Taraja would wear around her own eyes. Even with the black paint, Tela’s eyes are warm, and she smiles at Cassian, her tongue flicking out over her lips unconsciously.

Cassian wonders if maybe he should consider recruiting Tela, too. Going from the way she’s eyeing him, he thinks it wouldn’t be too hard to convince her to join the Resistance.

He gets to his feet, and shakes her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She looks like she wants to say more, but Tivik intervenes, ushering them all out the door of the tapcafe.

The sun is starting to set over the Holy City, sending long shadows spiraling over the dirt paths and stone stairs. Cassian walks next to Tela, who talks with enthusiasm, her hands flying about as she speaks. He listens politely, and answers her questions as best he can, aware that they’re walking out in the open and also that some of her questions are a little personal.

He’s distracted by a small group of people in long dark robes, sashes at their waists, a few of them carrying thin lightbows. They speak softly to one another, and a handful seem to be chanting, but Cassian cannot hear what they’re saying over the general chatter of Jedha City.

“Who are they?” He asks Tela, nodding at the people.

Tela sighs. “The Guardians of the Whills. They protect the Temple of the Kyber, and preach about the Force.”

“Kyber,” Cassian repeats, the word familiar, coming to him from a memory of a textbook at the Royal Imperial Academy. “Isn’t that the crystal that powered the jedi lightsabers?”

“Very same. But the jedi are extinct, so the Guardians are just protecting a building full of shiny rock.” Tela shrugs. “Don’t pay attention to them. They’ll con you out of your credits. Still, the Temple is a good, obvious place for a meet-up spot if you’re looking for someone; that’s where we go to wait for others, anyway.”

“I see,” Cassian murmurs, filing the information away.

The Partisans are currently stationed within the city, although Tivik tells Cassian that Gerrera is unhappy with this location, even as temporary as it is; he’d prefer to be out of the way, and secluded, on the outskirts of the Holy City. Cassian understands the inclination; it’s basically what the Fest Rebellion did after the Empire bombed their base when Cassian was thirteen.

He follows Tivik and Tela into a dark, unremarkable gray stone building.

Partisans in clothes in shades of brown, black, and gray turn and watch as Cassian, Tivik, and Tela pass. He sees that most of them wear black paint around their eyes like Tela, and he wonders if this is some sort of uniform they have. They are also extremely well-armed, with weapons of all kinds, ranging from vibroblades to an actual grenade launcher, tucked in a corner.

Tivik leads Cassian upstairs, to an unmarked black door at the end of a long corridor. Tivik knocks once, and then he opens it.

The room is completely empty, save for a handful of spindly chairs, dim candlelight, and a tall man, whose back is turned to his visitors. He turns around when Tivik closes the door.

The man is much older than Cassian, completely bald, with lined brown skin. His eyes are dark, and wide, and he eyes Cassian with no trace amount of suspicion, as Tivik and Tela shuffle past Cassian to greet him.

“Saw,” Tivik says, “This is Andor. He’s from the Corellian Resistance. He’s the one I told you about.”

Gerrera nods.

“Leave us,” Gerrera snaps to Tivik and Tela. They nod, Tela shooting one last look at Cassian, and leave, closing the door behind them.

Gerrera has not looked away from Cassian’s face this entire time.

He settles into a chair, and gestures to the empty one in front of him.

“Please, sit,” he says, his voice deep.

Cassian nods, and sits, directly across from Gerrera.

They stare at each other.

“I’ve never heard of you,” Gerrera says, breaking the silence. “How long have you been with the Resistance?”

“A little over a year with the Corellian Resistance,” Cassian says. “But I’ve been in this fight for seventeen years.”

“Seventeen years!” Gerrera exclaims, and he laughs, a booming laugh that only makes Cassian more nervous, because nothing about this is funny.

“Look at us,” he says, once he’s recovered. “Look how the war ages us. You, you are barely a young man, are you not, Andor? Young in body… not in mind.”

Cassian blinks. He doesn’t disagree, but he is also completely uninterested in talking about himself.

“I’m here on behalf of the Corellian Resistance,” he says. “We’d like to extend a hand of friendship. We’re currently in the process of forming an organization with several other rebel groups across the Core Worlds.”

“I see,” Gerrera says, stiffly. “I have had many difficulties with the Rebellions, Andor. I’m sure they’ve told you.”

“Yes, sir.”

The title makes Gerrera raise an eyebrow, but Cassian doesn’t take it back. He waits instead.

“They think I am… unhinged,” Gerrera continues. “They would take my men, my weapons, my information, and use it for their own purposes. They do not listen to me. They will not listen to me. It would not be a partnership.”

Cassian nods. “I know, sir. And we aren’t asking you to join our rebellion. We’d just like to open contact between our… separate groups, so we can communicate with one another. To offer safety, and help.”

Gerrera considers this. “Contact only?”

“Yes, sir. Unless we mutually come to an agreement to expand from contact to… an alliance. Only contact for now.”

Gerrera looks at Cassian, his eyes flickering, thinking very hard about something. Cassian hopes he’s considering his proposal.

“Why did they send you?” Gerrera abruptly asks.

“I’m sorry?”

“Why did they send you,” Gerrera repeats. “You are not a negotiator. You sit straight-backed, one hand ready to go for your blaster, and you hold eye contact, but you scout out the room. You map out escape routes as you move. Even now, sitting in that chair, I can see how ready you are for anything to happen. You are not a negotiator, Andor. You’re a spy.”

Gerrera’s voice raises a little at the end of his speech, but he makes no immediate move.

“Yes sir,” Cassian says. “I am.”

“Why did they send _you_.”

“Because I’m like you,” Cassian says, quietly.

He understood why Draven had sent him on this mission when he walked into the Partisans’ headquarters. He looked at the Partisans, saw their shadowed eyes and hunched shoulders, the tender way they cared for their blasters and bombs, the blood they washed from their hands. Even now, he looks at Gerrera, and he sees an unrelenting survivor.

Cassian has always been nothing if not a survivor.

“Ah,” Gerrera says, and there’s a touch of intrigue in his voice. “You are the one who does the dirty work, for your Resistance group.”

“I am. Yes.”

“No one else in your group will do the work you do.”

“There aren’t many of us, no,” Cassian says tightly, thinking of the other, unknown operatives who also work for Draven.

“And that is why you do it,” Gerrera says softly. “Because no one else will. It is the difficult work that must be done… But no one else will do it. Except for you, young man.”

Cassian nods once. Gerrera looks gratified.

“Hm,” he says, a strange smile passing over his face. “They will see. They will see.”

Cassian isn’t entirely sure he understands what Gerrera means by that. He waits, tense, and uncertain. Gerrera is an enigma to him; he’s very difficult to read, the kind of man Cassian does not frequently come across.

At last, Gerrera nods.

“Very well,” he rasps. “I will open contact with your Resistance group, Andor. But--” And here he leans forward, almost getting into Cassian’s space, but Cassian remains sitting still, looking Gerrera in the eye, unwilling to break eye contact.

“But,” Gerrera continues, “If the Rebellion wrongs me… If they cross me, or try to end my work… I will _leave_. And I will not come back. And I will not be bothered by anyone from your group ever again. I will kill anyone who tries. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Cassian says.

Gerrera nods. He stands, and Cassian mirrors him. They shake hands.

As Cassian turns to leave, Gerrera’s voice stops him.

“Andor.”

Cassian pauses, and looks back. Gerrera looks grim still, his face tight.

“They need more men like us,” he says. “Like you and I. Men who will do what needs to be done. You understand this, yes? They need us.”

“I think so,” Cassian says softly. He looks away, down to the ground, only for a moment, but Gerrera notices.

“You remind me of someone I knew,” he says. “I found her ten years ago now. She was someone who fought for me, unquestioningly. Loyal. Brave. Someone whose moral compass pointed them towards their chosen family, the Partisans, and me, above all else.”

“What happened to her?”

Gerrera’s face darkens. “I decided what was good for the Partisans… Was not the same as what was good for her.”

“Some family,” Cassian says.

“I’m not sure you would’ve chosen differently than me, Andor,” Gerrera says, and Cassian has had enough. He nods stiffly.

“We’ll be in touch,” he says, and leaves.

* * *

Cassian only spares ten minutes to talk to Tivik, to give his farewell. Tivik is more relaxed, less nervous now that he has a face to the name of the man he’s been in contact with, and he agrees to keep feeding Imperial information to Cassian as he comes across it.

Tela does not hide her disappointment at Cassian’s swift departure, but he finds he can’t pretend to be sorry.

He wants off Jedha, as soon as possible.

He thinks of Gerrera, the man’s inherent superiority, his vindictiveness, his feeling of righteousness. He thinks of the way the man laughed at how long Cassian has been fighting, the way he smiled like a predator.

Saw Gerrera reminds Cassian of himself.

But Gerrera had also abandoned someone he thought of as family, someone who was unquestionably loyal to him and the cause.

Cassian is twenty-three years old, and cannot imagine abandoning anyone like that.

He knows how painful being alone can be.

But everything else about Gerrera is so familiar.

Cassian wonders how many years away he is from turning into Saw Gerrera.

His flight back to Corellia is long.

* * *

While Cassian had been away on his mission, the Corellian Resistance has seen an influx of new volunteers and recruits. There is such a noticeably higher number of people milling around base that Cassian is actually stopped in his tracks as he goes to the cafeteria to find something to eat. He stares around, bewildered, and manages to snag Melshi on his way out.

“Where did they come from?” He asks.

“Mothma,” Melshi says. “She’s been all over the Outer Rim, finding these little pockets of resistance groups, people who want to fight but don’t have the numbers, or resources. She’s been sending them to the Core Worlds, Alderaan, and Chandrila too. This is our batch.”

Cassian stares. “They’re from the Outer Rim?”

“Yeah, most of them, I think.” Melshi shrugs, smiling a little. “Go make friends, Andor.”

Cassian has always been talented at making friends. It’s come more naturally to him than almost anything else, has become a requirement for his work as a recruiter and messenger. He looks around the crowded cafeteria now, and gets started.

He meets Alfie, a tall man with light skin and black hair that falls to his shoulders. Alfie is from Rishi, in the Outer Rim, a lush planet with everything from mountains to valleys to swamps. He’s come to the Corellian Resistance with only a handful of others, and they all look to Alfie as their leader of sorts.

“We had to do something,” Alfie tells Cassian, his Rishi comrades surrounding him. “The Empire is exterminating the Rishii like they’re _nothing_.”

Cassian learns that the Rishii are a sentient, carnivorous avian species native to Rishi. They fly, use tools, and have enhanced senses, including a heightened ear for language. They are peaceful, which is why the Empire’s recent movement to exterminate them is particularly troubling.

Cassian is unsurprised by this move by the Empire. He studied at the Royal Imperial Academy, and worked in Imperial Intelligence on Coruscant. He’s seen firsthand the brutal, and cruel view the Empire takes towards non-human species. It is insulting, degrading, and unbelievable; but anticipated.

He thanks Alfie and his friends for joining the Corellian Resistance, and makes a mental note to talk to Alfie later about joining Draven’s team. He’s a little older than Cassian, has no training beyond his work in the police force on Rishi, but there’s a focus in his eyes that Cassian recognizes.

Cassian leaves Alfie and his friends to talk, and starts to walk back to the kitchen for caf. He’s stopped in his tracks by the woman he spots out of the corner of his eye.

She’s about average height, with light tan skin, full pink lips, and a straight nose. She’s wearing some kind of flight uniform, and is speaking to a man several inches taller than her, with slightly darker skin, and a small beard. She looks past the man for a moment and spots Cassian, her soft brown eyes locking onto him, one eyebrow raising.

It’s her hair, Cassian thinks, that has caught his attention.

It is black, and curly, and hangs around her face and eyes.

It is almost the exact same hair as he saw on Serafima and Nerezza.

Cassian has been staring too long, and the woman has nudged her companion, who turns around. They’re both staring back at Cassian now, with similar looks of confusion, which Cassian cannot blame them for.

He swallows hard, gathers himself together, and approaches them.

“Sorry,” he says quietly to the woman. “You just, um… You look like someone I used to know.”

The woman blinks, but the man interjects, “A real head-turner, huh?”

He doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be mean, or to tell Cassian to get lost. He simply still sounds confused, and Cassian decides he should explain himself.

“I’m Cassian Andor,” he says. “I work in Intelligence.”

That’s his official job, at least. He doesn’t know what his work with Draven would be classified as exactly.

“Kes Dameron,” the man says, shaking Cassian’s hand. “This is my wife, Shara Bey.”

“Hello,” the woman says, also shaking Cassian’s hand.

“I’m sorry, again,” Cassian says quickly.

Shara laughs, shaking her head a little. “It’s all right. You just looked like I’d given you quite a shock. This someone, she’s dead, I take it?”

“My sister,” Cassian says, nodding. “And my mother, too. You look like them. Your hair, I think. I’m not saying that you’re old enough to be my mother.”

Both Shara and Kes look to be about five or so years older than Cassian, nowhere near old enough to be his parents. Shara doesn’t find his explanation offensive; she looks intrigued.

“I’m sorry about your sister and your mother,” she says. “Are you from Sernpidal, too?”

And Cassian almost laughs.

He’d thought her accent had sounded familiar.

The galaxy is so small.

“No,” he says. “I’m from Fest, I was born and raised there. But my mother was from Sernpidal.”

“Small galaxy,” Kes remarks.

“That’d explain the hair,” Shara says, waving a hand towards her dark curls. “We have a lot of it on Sernpidal.”

“Your accent, too,” Cassian says. “I, uh… Sorry. It’s just something I hadn’t noticed before.”

By that, he means, _It’s just something I never noticed about my mother_.

“If you ever have time,” Cassian says, hesitantly. “Maybe you could tell me about Sernpidal. My mother, she died before… I never asked. And I’d like to know about it.”

Shara nods, eyes warm. “Of course. And maybe if you have time, you can tell Kes and me about this Corellian Resistance. We’re brand new.”

“We’ve wanted to fight for a while,” Kes says. “But there wasn’t a rebel group on Raxus, none we could find, and so we’ve been asking around. We finally heard some rumors about Corellia. Shara flew us out here the next day.”

“I’m a pilot,” Shara says.

“And I’m a do-whatever-they-tell-me-to kinda guy,” Kes says.

Cassian laughs. “We need both those types of people here.”

“Glad to hear it,” Shara says.

“You free now?” Kes asks. “Want to grab a caf and start talking Sernpidal and rebellion?”

“Yeah,” Cassian says, smiling. “Yeah, that sounds good. Um, this way.”

Cassian shows Shara and Kes where the caf is, and then the three of them find an open table to sit and drink. Kes is cheery, and bright, and looks at Shara like she hung the stars. Shara is enthusiastic, and thoughtful, and smiles frequently at her husband. They are both so kind to Cassian, asking him questions, shocked at his youth when he tells them how old he is and how long he’s been fighting, and carefully take in his descriptions of how the Corellian Resistance works.

Kes doesn’t remind him of Gabriel, or Zeferino. He has an easygoing way to him that Gabriel never displayed, is more patient in explaining his motives and beliefs than Zeferino was, and more frequent to display affection, to wrap an arm around Cassian’s shoulders, or clap him on the back in a gesture of friendship.

Cassian likes him.

And Shara isn’t Serafima, or Nerezza. She isn’t as fiercely proud as Serafima was, and she’s more level-headed than Nerezza ever was. She laughs more easily, and listens more patiently. She shares her ideas and opinions with ease, and leans on Cassian’s shoulder during long meetings.

But when she turns her head, her dark curls move with her, brown eyes peeking out, and for a second, Cassian sees them.

Serafima and Nerezza.

But then she speaks, or laughs, and they’re gone.

She’s Shara.

Cassian likes her, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gesh, and his Tapcafe in Jedha, are canon. Tivik is a ROGUE ONE character; that guy Cassian kills when we first meet him.
> 
> Saw's story is still being written, but I have him staking out Jedha here, in 3 BBY, and also being very close to the man we see in ROGUE ONE. I wanted to lay the groundwork for him being there on a more permanent basis, as everyone in ROGUE ONE is very aware of Saw being here, including Galen Erso. I also got the impression from ROGUE ONE that Cassian had been to Jedha before ("That's Jedha, or what's left of it") and that flash of a moment where they run into each other made me think they knew ~exactly~ who the other was. There are also a lot of interesting parallels to be drawn between Cassian and Saw Gerrera, and this transformative work will explore them.
> 
> You probably know who Kes Dameron and Shara Bey are. It has not (yet) officially been stated where they came from, or when they joined the Rebellion (as far as I could tell; if this information IS available, don't bother telling me, I'm not changing it here) so in this transformative work Kes is from Raxus, Shara is from Sernpidal, they get in the game very early, and they know Cassian.
> 
> PSA: I'm one chapter away from finishing this story. After that, I will do a last, long, edit binge, and then probably just post all the remaining chapters here. (It's looking like 49 chapters in total.) So I would recommend subscribing, or taking note of where you've left off, because it IS possible to get spoiled.


	36. Legends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-three years old when he walks into a legend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably my favorite chapter of the story, but it is... Weird.

Cassian is twenty-three years old when he walks into a legend.

Draven assigns him an assassination; not the first for Cassian, who has successfully completed a few since joining the Corellian Resistance. The target in question is Major Evander Morin of the Imperial Navy. He’s a decorated officer, a veteran of the Clone Wars, and recent reports indicate that he will receive a promotion soon that will take him to Coruscant, and the heart of the Empire.

This concerns Draven, because the reports describing Morin are all glowing. They depict a steadfast man, unwavering, and efficient. Someone the Empire desperately needs, in order to continue its seemingly unstoppable expansion.

“Morin studied physics and engineering at university,” Draven tells Cassian during his briefing. “He’s well-suited to play a more pivotal role in the Empire’s weapons division. I expect that’s where he’ll go next.”

The reason the Corellian Resistance, or any other Resistance group, has not attempted to stop Morin before now is his location.

He’s stationed on Iego.

Cassian, like almost everyone else, grew up with only rumors of Iego. The planet is nicknamed the Planet of A Thousand Moons, because it _has_ a thousand moons, populated by mysterious, legendary creatures, called the Diathim by some, and Angels by others, described only as “light, with wings.” Humans who live on Iego are said to be immune to the effects of time and aging; they can live a hundred years there, and not change in appearance at all.

People visit Iego, and many never leave it.

It’s also notoriously difficult to find, hence its legendary and folkloric status. Draven, and the Resistance, have a vague understanding of where it is, but it’ll take a very competent pilot with experience in navigating the Outer Rim to get there.

Cassian is not a talented enough, nor experienced enough pilot for this mission.

But Shara Bey is.

“You’re going _where?_ ” She exclaims, when Cassian approaches her with the mission. “And you want me to fly you there?”

“I know it’s incredibly dangerous,” Cassian says quickly. “Don’t feel badly for declining the mission.” The Angels of Iego have also been rumored to be so beautiful, and so enchanting, that they cause ships to crash land on the planet, or on one of the orbiting moons. There’s a high chance that Cassian, and whoever flies him to Iego, will be marooned for some time. And with the way time passes on Iego…

“No, no,” Shara says, brown eyes wide and sparkling. “Kriff, Cass, I’ve always wanted to find Iego! It’s a pilot’s _dream_. This is a _gift_ , you don’t even have to ask!”

Kes, eating a breakfast of hotcakes behind her, rolls his eyes in a fond kind of way.

Cassian and Shara take K-2SO with them, to act as a second set of eyes and ears within the Imperial compound while Cassian tracks down Morin. K-2SO holds the most reservations about Iego, and spends the first day of the flight listing off his reasons for concern, including that he doesn’t know how the strange passage of time on the planet will affect his machinery, and that there isn’t enough information on Iego’s atmosphere to determine what kind of long-term effects Cassian might be facing.

Cassian finds this last complaint unnecessary; he doesn’t expect to live long enough to worry about long-term effects.

It takes about a week for them to reach the sector of the Outer Rim where they think Iego is. Cassian sits in the co-pilot’s chair, staring out at the darkness of space, while K-2SO hovers behind him, going over a star chart, and Shara steers them with steely confidence, directly into a nebula.

“See anything?” She asks.

“Not yet,” Cassian says. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for exactly; Iego is not supposed to be very big, and he can only hope there are enough settlements on it for them to see it before they run directly into it.

He’s also very much hoping to not spot any Angels attempting to take over the ship.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” K-2SO says.

“Ssh,” Shara mutters, guiding the nose of the ship down.

Cassian looks at the navigation system, and feels his heart jolt. “Shara, there’s something ahead.”

“Iego?”

“Looks about the right size. Life detected.”

Slowly, blossoming like a flower, Iego emerges from space.

The planet is surrounded by about a dozen moons, with hundreds more beyond it. The surface of Iego looks oddly purple, for reasons Cassian cannot understand, as it’s a breathable planet, said to be covered in rocks and wastelands, none of which should be purple.

Shara grins, her face brightening. “There you are. Look at you.”

They land without incident.

Draven has instructed Shara to linger in the ship, to be ready for a quick getaway should Cassian and K-2SO need one. She’s also to stay by the ship to guard it, should the Angels or desperate castaways of Iego make an attempt to hijack it.

Cassian changes into a stolen Imperial naval trooper uniform, which consists of black boots, black trousers, and black shirt; in other words, black from head-to-toe, a style that instantly reminds Cassian of his Royal Imperial Academy uniform.

He’s also reminded of the Academy by the black sniper rifle he’s been given to kill Morin with. He checks it over quickly, and then pulls the strap over his head, letting it hang around his shoulders, the weight against his back.

Once he’s all set, he watches Shara as she checks her blasters and dagger, making sure she’s armed and ready. He presses a comlink into her hand.

“Call if you need anything,” he tells her. “Don’t worry about what I might be doing. If you need help, Kay and I will drop what we’re doing and come back. Understood?”

“Yes, _sir_ ,” Shara says, winking a little when she says the formality. Cassian rolls his eyes, and she laughs.

He locks the ship door behind him.

“Ready, Kay?” He asks, as they walk into Cliffhold, the biggest village on Iego, and the one housing the Imperial outpost where Morin is stationed.

K-2SO nods. “Yes. But I would like to leave this place as soon as possible. I don’t like it.”

Cassian doesn’t either. The air is breathable, but oddly heavy, and everything he can see is strangely washed out. He can’t see anyone in sight, yet he also cannot shake the feeling that he’s being watched.

“We’ll be quick,” he promises.

They move swiftly once they’re inside the outpost, finding a dark room with a computer mainframe for K-2SO to hack into, to locate Morin. Cassian waits near the door, one ear pressed against it to listen for any movement in the hallway beyond, with the only movement inside the room coming from the whirring noise of K-2SO communicating with the computer.

“Major Morin isn’t here,” K-2SO says at last.

Cassian spins around. “ _What?_ Where is he?”

“He’s gone to something called The Choir Alignment for the day,” K-2SO says. “A survey mission for the Empire. They’re curious about it. It has something to with unexplained geometrical formations that are not natural.”

Cassian definitely does not like the sound of that, but is eager to get this mission over with so they can get the hell off Iego. “Fine. Find out where it is, and how we can get there.”

* * *

They steal a landspeeder from the hangar off the Imperial outpost. Cassian knows that Draven had told him to keep K-2SO inside the compound, to stay locked into the security system in order to alert Cassian should anyone become aware of his presence on Iego. But he figures that it doesn’t matter, since Cassian isn’t inside the outpost anymore, and also that he’ll need an extra set of eyes even more in The Choir Alignment.

K-2SO hadn’t been able to find anything more about it, and Cassian hates going into something so blind.

They simply don’t have a choice.

After an hour of travel, K-2SO tells Cassian they’ve reached the coordinates he’d found in the Imperial system, and they stop. Cassian climbs off the speeder, and looks around. They’re in front of a deep, large valley, open before the clear black sky. He looks up and spots shimmering stars, the brightest ones being the moons of Iego.

It is beautiful, certainly, but he doesn’t know what the Empire finds so fascinating about it.

His question is answered when he approaches the edge of the cliff.

The valley below is a hundred meters across, and now Cassian can see that it’s shaped perfectly like a nine-pointed star. It is very obviously unnatural, had to have been made by _something_ , yet by what, Cassian has no idea. None of the native inhabitants of Iego, the Angels or the lesser-known Maelibi (who live underground and are very rarely seen) have the technology that would’ve been able to create this formation so flawlessly.

“Remarkable,” K-2SO says, sounding impressed in spite of himself.

Cassian nods, feeling similarly. “All right. I’m going to find Morin. You stay here, and keep an eye out for anything odd.”

“Odder than this valley?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Cassian snaps. He looks in the landspeeder and finds a small blaster, handing it to K-2SO. “Be ready for anything.”

“Okay.”

Cassian turns and walks back towards the edge of the cliff. He drops, carefully letting himself hang off the edge. Slowly, he begins the long climb down, as K-2SO returns to the speeder.

The climb is a little treacherous, but not the most dangerous or difficult Cassian has completed. Fest was similarly rocky, but had the additional hazard of being covered in snow and ice. Iego is completely dry, and soft brown dust rises from the rocks to blow gently into Cassian’s face. He keeps moving, until he finds a crevice with a large boulder blocking it from view of the valley below. He drops onto the boulder, lying on his front, and sets up his sniper rifle. He peers through the lens, surveying the floor of the valley.

There are a handful of people milling about it, and Cassian sees that many of them are wearing gray Imperial officer’s uniforms, while others are wearing black uniforms like Cassian’s, and then a few are stormtroopers. A small pile of surveying equipment has been set up, but is largely ignored by the group, who are walking around in small circles, staring at the sky.

Cassian has no idea what they could be looking at.

He peers through the lens and spots Morin, a stocky man with a crop of blond hair, standing still in the valley, eyes trained to the sky.

Cassian takes a breath.

He shoots.

Morin falls, collapsing to the valley floor.

His fellow officers don’t notice.

Stunned, Cassian tears his eye away from the lens of the rifle, staring down at the valley. Morin’s body lies lifeless on the rocky ground, blood seeping from his head, quite obviously dead. The shot that ended his life was a crack of noise that echoed around the valley, and should’ve drawn attention.

The Imperial officers and stormtroopers don’t look.

They continue in their circular movements, looking up at the sky.

Cassian’s feeling of uncertainty and dread rushes back into him. He has to get off this planet.

He gets up, scrambling to his feet, and pulling his rifle back over his shoulder. He takes one last look at the men below, and turns, ready to climb.

He is blinded by a brilliant wave of white light.

There is some kind of creature in front of him, but its features are hard to make out. It seems to be made of pure light, tinged with yellow, and as he watches, six sharpened and long extremities appear behind it, fanning out and expanding its light, flapping silently. Wings.

He blinks, and the light fades somewhat, so he can see now that the creature looks female, with luminescent skin that matches its wavy hair, gray eyes, and long limbs. It’s much taller than him, and wearing a dress of sorts, a very light gray, and is currently hovering above the ground.

It’s an Angel.

Cassian has never seen one, but he knows that this is what he’s looking at.

It is the very definition of ethereal. He cannot look away.

The Angel moves closer to him, its wings making no sound. Cassian is frozen in place, his hands loose, his eyes wide. He could not move, even if the Angel threatened him.

And it isn’t threatening him, not at all. It’s giving off the warmest aura he’s ever encountered, one of benevolence, and kindness, and… forgiveness.

“Why?” It asks, and its voice echoes bizarrely inside Cassian’s head. Its mouth barely moves to make the noise, and Cassian wonders if it even spoke aloud.

“Why?” Cassian repeats, bemused.

The Angel blinks slowly. “Why did you kill the man?”

Cassian swallows. “Because I had to.”

The Angel continues to stare at him. Slowly, it raises one long and glowing arm, and guides its fingers to Cassian’s face. He’s still entirely frozen, and does not move to prevent the Angel from touching his forehead.

He isn’t scared. The Angel is pure peace.

“Hm,” the Angel breathes. “You are bad. And you are good. You’re a mixture, Cassian Andor.”

“You know my name?” Cassian asks.

“I see it,” the Angel says, mouth barely moving, voice still echoing, and Cassian wonders if he’s hallucinating.

The Angel comes to a resolution and nods, pulling its fingers away.

“Gray,” it tells him.

“Gray,” Cassian repeats.

“You live in it. It will kill you. But you will not die in it.”

Cassian doesn’t understand. “What are you talking about?”

“Later,” the Angel says. “We will take care of the officers below. They do not belong here. This place does not belong to them. It is time for you to go now. Your work here is done, but you have more to do elsewhere. You are still needed.”

Cassian blinks, opens his mouth to ask, but with a bizarre buzzing noise, the Angel disappears in a flash of light.

He blinks again, and realizes he’s somehow standing at the top of the valley, his back to the ground far below.

He instinctively knows that he shouldn’t turn around and look.

Cassian focuses his eyes, spotting K-2SO sitting in the landspeeder ahead. K-2SO is staring at him.

Cassian opens his mouth, but freezes when K-2SO lifts the blaster he’d given him, pointing it at Cassian.

He watches three bolts of red light fly from the blaster, two embedding themselves in Cassian’s abdomen, and the third blowing a hole through one of his lungs.

Cassian sways with the force of the shots, and looks down, surprised at the sight of dark red blood, pooling over his black shirt, turning it impossibly darker.

He stumbles, and takes a step back.

It is enough. He falls over the edge of the valley, plummeting towards the ground far below, the pain so very far away.

Cassian is twenty-three years old.

He thinks, _So this is how I die_.

It is the last thought he has, before that strange, peaceful white light appears above him, and his eyes slip closed.

Cassian is twenty-three years old, and he’s dying.

* * *

He’s back on Fest.

Snow is falling, silent, covering the earth in a soft blanket of white. The sky is that familiar shade of murky gray, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Cassian stares up at it for a long time, feeling snowflakes brush against his face, settling in his hair, landing on his eyelashes.

He looks down, and sees that he’s dressed in gray trousers, and a thin gray shirt.

He isn’t cold.

(Somewhere, Cassian is dying. He’s bleeding out, and choking on his own breath. He should be cold.)

He looks back up, to the space directly in front of him.

It’s Serafima’s house.

Small, painted coal black, the polar opposite to the snow that piles up against the walls, lining the windows with frost and chill. Yellow lights shimmer inside, casting the shadows of the people moving inside against the glass windows.

Cassian walks forward, and opens the front door.

A fire dances in the fireplace, sending a wave of heat against Cassian’s face. He watches the flames leap and spin, and then he turns, looking towards the spindly wooden table that takes up most of the room. The table is piled with dishes of Festian food, from stew to vegetables to bread to salad. It has been set for five people.

From the kitchen comes Gabriel.

Cassian’s father looks just as he remembers him, but more clearly. He’s as tall as Cassian, with short, thin dark hair, and lined tan skin. His nose is crooked, more so than Cassian’s, and he has a layer of stubble covering his chin and cheeks. He is dressed in a long gray tunic, the sleeves rolled up. As Cassian watches, he sets out glasses of water, and sits at the head of the table.

He looks up, and spots Cassian. “Sit, Cassi.”

“Papa,” Cassian whispers.

Gabriel frowns. “What is the matter?”

Serafima walks in from the kitchen next.

Her curly dark hair is tied up in a knot at the back of her head, but a few errant strands still fall in front of her eyes. She wears a thick gray dress, a gray scarf wrapped around her neck, brushing her waist. She smiles warmly at her husband, settling into the chair next to him and taking his hand. She turns to Cassian then, her dark brown eyes identical to his own.

“Aren’t you hungry, Cassi?” She asks.

“Mama,” Cassian says, voice cracking.

Nerezza follows Serafima from the kitchen. Cassian’s sister is dressed in a gray sweater and matching trousers, but missing the blaster she wore at her hip in the later years of her life. She’s as old as she was the last time he saw her, nineteen years old, and her curly hair is short, brushing her chin.

“Come on, Cassi,” she calls, winking at him, sitting on the other side of Gabriel, across from Serafima.

“Ezza,” Cassian says. His hands are shaking, and he can’t understand what he is seeing.

(Somewhere, Cassian is dying. Medics swarm him, tearing his black shirt off to get to the blaster holes in his abdomen and chest, as his heart flatlines.)

Even though he should’ve expected it, Cassian is still stunned by Zeferino’s appearance.

His brother looks as he did the last time Cassian saw him, and is even wearing his gray Imperial officer’s uniform, though it is unblemished. His hair is military-grade short, cheeks smooth, and his eyes light like Gabriel’s. Zeferino sits next to Serafima, and jerks his chin at the open seat opposite him, next to Nerezza.

“We’re waiting, Cassi,” he says.

And Cassian, who could never not follow a request from his siblings, pulls the chair out and sits.

The Andors begin to eat dinner.

Cassian remains still, drinking them in, eyes flickering from face to face.

He hasn’t seen his family together like this in years. Seventeen years, to be exact. They’re all dead.

“How are you here?” Cassian whispers.

“We’re having dinner, Cassi,” Gabriel says. “How was school today?”

“Papa,” Cassian says.

He hasn’t been in school in years. Longer still, not in school on Fest.

“What is this,” Cassian croaks.

(Somewhere, Cassian is dying. His heart has stopped, and medical droids are readying a defibrillator in an attempt to re-start it.)

“We started a new story in my Classic Literature class,” says Nerezza, and Cassian is quite sure Nerezza never took a Classic Literature class, knows that most of the Classic Literature classes taught on Fest were taught at a higher level than Nerezza completed, knows that she dropped out of school to take care of Cassian before she got that far. “ _The Tale of Anxo._ ”

The title sounds familiar, and Cassian thinks it must’ve been a book he read on one of those long stormy days where he was stuck inside Serafima’s house, the weather outside too dangerous for anyone to venture out in.

“A good story,” Serafima says. “A Festian legend.”

“We’ve been talking about Argi, a character in it,” Nerezza says.

“Argi was envious of Anxo, the hero,” Gabriel says. “Anxo protected Fest from its great nemesis, Bakar, who murdered Festians, destroyed villages. Argi challenged Anxo, and Anxo bested him. Then Anxo learned of Argi’s history.”

“Argi had a brother, Arrats,” Zeferino says. “They fought a lot.”

“Argi killed Arrats,” Cassian says, the old Festian legend coming back to him now.

“His people decided Argi was worse than even Bakar,” Nerezza says. “Because he’d committed the most terrible crime.”

“Kin killing,” Serafima says.

“A primeval crime,” Gabriel says. “A defeat of legacy. A murder with no possible vengeance.”

Cassian listens to his family discuss this side character in an old Festian legend. He’d barely paid the character of Argi any mind when he’d read the classic legend, but he has a suspicion now as to why they’re talking about him.

“Zef,” Cassian whispers.

Zeferino looks at him. “Yes, Cassi?”

“I killed you,” Cassian says.

“Yes, you did,” Zeferino says.

Cassian blinks, and Gabriel, Serafima, and Nerezza disappear. The food, glasses, and dishes are all gone too, and the fire in the fireplace has died down entirely. The room is completely silent, the snow falling outside, over Zeferino’s shoulder.

It is just Zeferino and Cassian now, sitting on opposite sides of the table.

“You haven’t come to terms with it yet,” Zeferino says. “You’ve barely given me any thought since it happened. You need to accept what you did.”

“Anxo says that Argi is going to be damned for killing his brother,” Cassian says.

“He does,” Zeferino confirms. “But how does the story end, Cassi?”

(Somewhere, Cassian is dying. But medics have gotten his heart going again, and are moving to repair the hole in his right lung, before he can asphyxiate.)

Cassian tries to remember. “Anxo does defeat Bakar. But he isn’t sure he will win. Argi lends him his own sword, which is supernaturally powerful, to help him.”

“And Anxo succeeds,” Zeferino says. “Do you remember what he says to Argi after the battle?”

“No,” Cassian says.

“Yes, you do,” Zeferino says, smiling.

Cassian frowns, and the memory comes to him, easily, like all it needed was Zeferino’s encouragement.

“He thanks Argi,” Cassian says, slowly. “For the sword. He says he holds no ill will towards Argi, not anymore.”

Zeferino nods. “It is the happiest ending the brother killer could hope for.”

(Somewhere, Cassian is dying. Medics have patched the hole in his lung, but the shock and blood loss has caught up to Cassian’s heart, and it stops beating for a second time.)

Zeferino stands, and Cassian finds himself mirroring him, scrambling to his feet. He blinks, and the table vanishes, as does Serafima’s house, and he and Zeferino are standing out in the snow, the gray sky of Fest open above them.

“You aren’t real,” Cassian whispers. “This isn’t real, this isn’t happening.”

He was on Iego. He remembers now. He remembers killing Morin, he remembers the Angel, he remembers K-2SO shooting him, and he remembers falling.

He remembers the bright, peaceful light.

“Am I dead?” Cassian asks.

Zeferino shakes his head. “Not today, Cassi. Not yet. You still have good to do.”

“You told me that, once.”

“ _I will not kill you, Cassi. Do you know why? Because you’re my little brother, Cassi. Because I love you. Because I think you have good, to do._ ”

“I did,” Zeferino says.

“But I killed you,” Cassian says. “I didn’t hesitate, even though you’re my brother.”

“Because I killed Taraja,” Zeferino says. “Because I supported the Empire. Because you didn’t think I had good to do.”

“Excuses.”

“No,” Zeferino says, smiling a little, the soft smile he always reserved for Cassian when they were children. “Justifications.”

“This doesn’t matter,” Cassian says. “This isn’t real. You aren’t here. You’re dead. This is… This is Iego, or the Angels, they’re doing something, they’ve done something to my head--”

“Maybe it’s a gift, Cassian,” Zeferino says.

“ _How_ \--”

“To see your family again, for just a minute more,” Zeferino says. “To see your home. To see us all together. To see me.” He reaches out, and takes Cassian’s hand.

“I forgive you, Cassi.”

Cassian closes his eyes. “That means nothing. This isn’t you.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Cassian opens his eyes at that. He blinks, staring at Zeferino, or whatever is wearing his skin. “What?”

“You’re dying, Cassi,” Zeferino says. “Maybe you did come back to us, just for a moment. We’ve been waiting to see you again.” He looks up at the sky abruptly, and adds, “And we’ll keep waiting. It’s time to go back, Cassi.”

(Somewhere, Cassian is dying. But his heart has been shocked back to life again, and medics have turned to the holes in his abdomen, his blood still dripping out of his body.)

“Zeferino--”

“Good luck, Cassian,” Zeferino says. “Be brave. Be good. Be _forgiving_.”

“ _Zeferino_ \--”

“Have a little faith. Just a little. At least once more.”

Zeferino disappears, as abruptly as if he was never there.

All that is left is gray.

Cassian stands there, alone, and then the gray sky swallows him up.

* * *

Cassian opens his eyes, with the feeling that he has not opened them in quite some time.

He blinks, and breathes deeply. He’s in the medical wing of the Corellian Resistance base, an open room filled with gurneys and cots. He’s currently lying in such a gurney, thick bandages wrapped around his chest and abdomen.

He turns his head, and sees Kes Dameron, asleep in a chair next to his bed.

“Kes,” Cassian says, but he barely makes a noise, his voice raw. He tries again. “ _Kes_.”

It’s enough. Kes blinks awake, turning his head. He looks at Cassian, uncomprehending, before it finally clicks that Cassian is awake.

“ _Cassian_ , kriff,” he gasps, sitting up straight and seizing Cassian’s limp hand. “Oh, kriff. We weren’t sure you were going to wake up. How do you feel?”

“What happened?”

Kes shakes his head. “See, that’s the thing… Well, uh, what do you remember?”

Cassian frowns, forcing his mind to go back. He feels like there’s a big space of time he’s missing, a black gap in his memory, that he has to go back quite far to remember Iego.

“Kay shot me,” he remembers. “And I fell. And there was a… A light?”

Kes nods. “Yeah. So, uh. We don’t really know what happened exactly. K-2SO went back to your ship, alone, and he told Shara that he’d shot you and that you were… gone.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Kes says. “That’s what he said. And Shara flipped out, because she thought he was saying he’d killed you. She was going to kill him, but he powered himself down. Right there in the ship.”

“Okay.”

“So Shara’s out on Iego, without a co-pilot, thinking you’re dead,” Kes says. “She decides to send a message to the Resistance, for advice on how to proceed. So she’s sitting out in the ship, waiting for a response and someone knocks on the ship door. She opens it, and it’s… It’s an Angel.”

Cassian nods, somehow unsurprised.

Kes laughs. “She about had a heart attack, the thing was so bright. Anyway, it tells her that you’re alive, and in a medical center on Jabiim.”

“ _What?_ ”

Jabiim is a planet on the Triellus Trade Route, rainy, known for its rivers and historic battles. It is a half an hour’s worth of lightspeed travel away from Iego.

“Yeah,” Kes says. “That’s what I mean when I say we don’t know what happened exactly. Our best guess is that the Angels took you there, but we’ve got no idea how. Or, uh, why. You don’t remember anything after the light?”

“No.”

And Cassian doesn’t. He remembers being shot, remembers his surprise, his belief that he was going to die. He remembers falling, and he remembers a bright light.

An Angel.

And nothing else. Not until waking up on Corellia just now.

“Anyway, Shara hauled ass over to Jabiim, flying completely solo and kind of blind, and she found you,” Kes says. “Got back in touch with us there, too, but uh… No one believed her. It just didn’t make any sense. You and her were over there for a month, and then--”

“A month?” Cassian interjects. “How long was I asleep?”

Kes looks apologetic. “Jabiim doesn’t have as advanced tech as Corellia does, being in the Outer Rim and all. And your heart stopped twice when you first got there, they had to shock you back. They really didn’t think you were gonna make it, but… you wouldn’t let go. You kept coming back.”

Cassian nods; he has no idea what to say to that.

(He’s always been nothing if not a survivor.)

“They had to put you to sleep for a while, so your lung could fix itself properly, not to mention your intestines and your kidney. Cassian, you went to Iego four months ago.”

“That… _What?_ ”

“Yeah. Uh, happy birthday, man. Slept right through your birthday last week. You’re twenty-four.”

“Oh,” Cassian breathes. He stares straight ahead for a moment, overwhelmed, unable to process everything that has apparently happened to him.

“Shara’s gonna be really kriffing happy to see you awake,” Kes says. “She’s off-planet right now, on another mission, but she’s due back next week. She’ll want to see you.”

“Of course,” Cassian says. A thought occurs to him.

“Kes… What happened to Kay? Why did he…”

The thought is so unspeakable, so horrible, he cannot finish it: _Why did he try to kill me?_

“We don’t know,” Kes says, sympathetic. “The technicians think it had something to do with Iego. That planet’s always been a bit of a question mark, and so the idea is that something about it messed with his executive functions. Made him think you were an Imp, or something. Your uniform probably didn’t help.”

“Yeah,” Cassian agrees.

“He figured it out quickly enough,” Kes says. “Got himself back to Shara, at least.”

“Where is he?”

Kes squeezes Cassian’s hand. “I know he’s your friend…”

“ _Kes_.”

He sighs.

“Draven was pushing to destroy him completely,” Kes murmurs. “But Shara and I talked him down. K-2SO is yours, for better or worse, and we figured that you should have a say before we did anything irreversible like that. But Draven insisted we had to do _something_.

“So they took him apart, literally,” Kes says, softly. “Opened up his drives, his processors, everything. Reprogrammed him all over again. Rewrote everything.”

“Oh,” Cassian breathes.

“His memory’s been wiped, Cassian. He won’t remember Iego, or shooting you. He won’t remember you at _all_. He’ll be like any other droid on this base. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Cassian says again.

“You can meet him again when you’re discharged from medical,” Kes says. “But you won’t be going on any missions together any time soon. He’s been grounded. Being reevaluated, and all that. No matter what, he’ll never be allowed a blaster again.”

“I understand,” Cassian says.

He looks up at the ceiling.

He thinks of K-2SO, and does not believe for a minute that Kay meant to shoot him. He thinks of when he first reprogrammed K-2SO, three, four years ago now, how he woke him up that first time, the surprise and wonder in the droid’s voice. He thinks of living in the tiny apartment with K-2SO on Coruscant, remembers coming home from work, to see Taraja and K-2SO sitting on the floor, repairing blasters and talking together.

There is a continuously dwindling list of people who remember Taraja left in the galaxy, and K-2SO was one of them. He was the first person Cassian saw after she died, the one who carried her out of the Opera House, who mourned her alongside Cassian. K-2SO loved her.

“ _That droid loves you, Cass_ ,” Taraja said, and it is one of the last things she ever says to Cassian.

K-2SO loved Cassian, too.

K-2SO left Coruscant, and Fest, because Cassian did. He coached him through his panic attack over Taraja’s death on the way to Mantooine. He worked with Cassian on Fest, was gentle and sweet with the children there.

“ _I want to go with you, Cassian_ ,” K-2SO said, sitting next to Cassian, in the co-pilot’s chair, like he belonged there.

Cassian is the only one who remembers any of this now.

He’s the only one.

Another member of his family is gone forever, and it’s the one who was supposed to stay.

From somewhere distant in his head, he hears a voice whisper, _Have a little faith. Just a little. At least once more._

He doesn’t understand any of it.

He stares up at the ceiling of the medical wing, and bites his lip, and tries very hard not to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so:
> 
> (The Author listened to "Moving On" and "There's No Place Like Home" from the LOST soundtracks on repeat while writing this chapter.)
> 
> The Angels are both an Old and New EU thing. How I think of them, and describe them, is more Old EU in that they are very strange and poorly understood, and don't look a whole lot like humans. I also pushed it a little further, and made them more angelic, in the sense that they Know Things and have Mysterious Capabilities.
> 
> Iego is still canon in the New EU, but I'm not sure the strange passage of time, or the wayward travelers, are still things. They were in the Old EU, and I love it.
> 
> The Tale of Anxo is (obviously?) not canon, but rather, a very loose description of some events in BEOWULF, with Argi acting as Unferth, the side character who eventually does help Beowulf, but also notably killed his own brother. The translation I read suggested that killing a brother was the worst possible crime, worse even than Beowulf's enemy Grendel's crimes, and I had it in mind as I wrote about Cassian killing Zeferino.
> 
> K-2SO shooting and almost killing Cassian is also very much not a canon event, but one I came up with. I am very intrigued by this throwaway line from ROGUE ONE: "Why does she get a blaster, and I don't?" The correct answer is likely because K-2SO is a reprogrammed Imperial droid, and that's enough, but the fact that he doesn't know why is very interesting to me. And I always saw Cassian and K-2SO as having a more complicated relationship than we might've been led to believe, and so this story is going to explore that, and the fallout of this event.
> 
> I have also now finished this story, and can confirm that it is 49 chapters long, and about 198k words. I'm doing a last big read-through, and waiting for my best friend to read the last chapters and Confirm that it makes sense, and then I'll post the rest here.


	37. The Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-four years old, and trying to catch up on everything he’s missed in the four months he spent asleep.

Cassian is twenty-four years old, and trying to catch up on everything he’s missed in the four months he spent asleep.

He learns that something called the Corellian Treaty was written and signed by Rebellion leaders. Kes is a little vague on the details--he was off-planet for the signing--but he knows just enough to answer Cassian’s biggest questions.

He describes this: Garm Bel Iblis got in touch with Bail Organa and Mon Mothma, the leaders of the two other large Core World Rebellions, namely Alderaan and Chandrila, and brought them to Corellia for a new series of discussions. There, the three leaders drafted and signed the Corellian Treaty, pledging to unite their organizations, their people and their supplies, to become one consolidated Rebellion group. Organa will fund the majority of the Rebellion, while Bel Iblis will focus on gathering ships, and Mothma, rebels.

“We’re calling ourselves the Alliance,” Kes says. “Mothma’s pushing for Alliance to Restore the Republic, but it’s a mouthful, so Alliance for short. Rebel Alliance, if you want to be fancy.”

Cassian is visited by a memory of his father, attempting to get the name _Separatist Alliance_ to catch on, and hears Serafima’s voice calmly replying, _‘Separatist Alliance’ is an oxymoron_.

He smiles.

“Rebel Alliance is an oxymoron,” Cassian says.

Kes snorts.

“Whatever, we’re legit now,” he says. “Well, I mean. As legit as rebels can be.”

The next step is to openly declare rebellion, and the Alliance’s intentions. Mothma has been writing a Declaration of Rebellion, which Kes expects will be lengthy, in keeping with Mothma’s character, her diligence, and attention to detail.

“You’d think we could just say ‘We’re rebelling, kriff you,’ but apparently not,” Kes says.

Numerous Rebellion representatives are convening on Corellia in two weeks to ratify the Declaration.

“I don’t know who all’s invited yet, but more than we’re expecting, probably,” Kes says.

What is expected is Shara returning to Corellia a week after Cassian wakes up. He’s still in the med bay, still being closely monitored by a small fleet of medical droids, who, whenever he complains about lying still for so long, like to remind him of the three holes in his torso, and the fact that some of his major organs are still trying to knit themselves back together.

Shara all but runs from her ship to the medical wing, and almost re-opens the holes in Cassian’s torso with the force of her hug.

“Kriff, Cass, you scared the _hell_ out of me!” She exclaims. “What the hell were you thinking? What happened? What do you remember?”

Cassian recounts his story, which is still woefully thin. He hasn’t remembered anything beyond what he was able to tell Kes, and Draven, when his commanding officer stopped by to see him. Draven had been just as puzzled as Cassian was at the turn of events, but seemed to believe him; or, at least, trusted that Cassian was telling the truth as best as he could. He was pleased that Cassian had completed the assassination, anyway.

Shara is still quite shaken by her encounter with an Angel.

“It was… So bright,” she says, her eyes a little distant, sitting on Cassian’s bed as he listens. “And just… good. Pure goodness. I felt safe. And it told me that you were still alive, and in a medical center on _Jabiim_. You don’t remember getting there?”

“No,” Cassian says.

Shara shakes her head. “I know the Angels are kind of unknowns, but… Wow.”

“Yeah, wow,” Cassian agrees.

He wishes he could remember more of what happened to him, but he just can’t. It’s all a completely dark blank spot in his mind.

He does know that he isn’t ever going to go back to Iego again.

Cassian is finally discharged from the medical wing, a few days before the Rebellion leaders are set to arrive. He has three thick and ugly scars for souvenirs from Iego; two in different spots on his abdomen, and one higher, on the right side of his chest. He also still has the scar from the vibroblade, from when he was stabbed in the Opera House; he thinks that scar has more painful memories associated with it than these new scars do.

But seeing K-2SO again is hard.

Cassian runs into him on his first day back on his feet, when he’s getting himself mobile by walking laps around the base. K-2SO is helping unload provisions from a ship, working by himself, just like he was the first time Cassian saw him, in the Imperial hangar on Coruscant.

Cassian braces himself, and approaches K-2SO.

“Hi,” he says quietly.

K-2SO turns, and cocks his head. “Hello.”

There is no recognition in his voice, no whirring from his eyes as he looks at Cassian.

It hurts more than Cassian expected. He gathers himself, remembers his manners.

“I’m, uh, Cassian,” Cassian says, holding out his hand. “Cassian Andor.”

“Oh! I am K-2SO,” says K-2SO. “I am a reprogrammed Imperial droid. My speciality is strategic analysis.”

This last comment is news to Cassian, who hadn’t been aware that K-2SO had a specialty. He wonders if the Corellian Resistance technicians programmed one into him; it’d be the kind of thing Cassian doesn’t know how to do.

Cassian is personally more startled by the fact that K-2SO doesn’t move to shake his hand.

Cassian remembers that he’d had to prompt K-2SO to shake his hand, after he’d turned him back on that first time. He remembers including basic human mannerisms and niceties in his reprogramming of K-2SO, in order to rebuild him to have a more human sensibility, and realizes that the Corellian Resistance technicians did no such thing.

He’s just a droid to them. They probably think like Wada did, that droids can’t be good.

Cassian knows this is a falsehood. K-2SO might’ve shot him, might’ve almost killed him, but he knows, without a doubt, that it was not _him_. Not Kay. Not his friend.

He swallows hard, his throat closing. K-2SO speaks again.

“You are my master,” he says.

“I…” Cassian frowns. “What?”

“My master,” K-2SO repeats. “That is what General Draven told me. Captain Cassian Andor is my master.”

Cassian stares.

When he’d reprogrammed K-2SO, he’d specifically included a clause against this idea of K-2SO considering him his master. Cassian had never wanted to be K-2SO’s master; he’d only ever wanted to be his friend.

“Right, okay,” Cassian mutters now. “I just wanted to say hi.”

“Oh,” K-2SO says, sounding a little bewildered. “Okay.”

“I’m still grounded,” Cassian says quickly. “But we will get a mission sooner or later. I thought we should meet, beforehand.”

“Oh, I see,” K-2SO says, sounding like he finally understands the purpose of this moment. “Why have you been grounded?”

It’s a rude inquiry, and reminiscent of the old K-2SO, and Cassian wishes he could be as forthcoming as the old K-2SO was in his answer. But he can’t.

“I was shot,” he says, vaguely waving a hand towards his chest, still bandaged. “I’m still recovering.”

“Oh,” K-2SO says. “I am sorry to hear that.”

_It was you, Kay. You shot me, and I almost died. I wish you could remember_. _I wish that you remembered me, and Taraja, and Coruscant_.

Cassian clears his throat. “It is what it is. I’ll be okay.”

He’ll accept it. Eventually. Just not today.

“It’s… It’s nice to meet you, K-2SO,” he says.

“Yes,” K-2SO says. “You too, Captain Andor.”

“No. Um… Call me Cassian. Please.”

“Oh.” K-2SO looks a little perturbed by this, but nods his head. “All right. Cassian.”

Cassian stares at him, considers asking if he could call him Kay, but decides against it. Cassian feels like he’s too fragile, and unstable, at this point in time to handle K-2SO saying no to the nickname.

He walks away.

* * *

Garm Bel Iblis spends the last day before the Rebellion leaders are set to arrive making sure that the Corellian Resistance base is clean and ready.

Cassian has already met and re-introduced himself to Bel Iblis, had done so before he’d gone to Iego. Bel Iblis had taken the news of Cassian’s use of a pseudonym in stride, and bought the excuse that Cassian had determined Anchoron to be too unknown, too much of an Imperial territory, to risk using his real name and being discovered. He’d thanked Cassian for giving him Organa’s message on Anchoron, and for being so supportive of Bel Iblis’ very open grieving. He’s been polite and kind to Cassian since their reacquaintance, treating him like any other rebel on base.

Cassian kind of hates it, because he knows Bel Iblis would behave very differently towards him if he knew the truth of Cassian’s purpose on Anchoron.

Draven tells him to ignore it, to behave normally.

The first rebellion leader to arrive is, unsurprisingly, Mon Mothma.

She’s a small woman in seemingly ever-present white, today wearing a long white gown and heeled boots, a small group of dedicated Chandrilan soldiers shadowing her steps. Her hair is a soft auburn color, and short, ending above her sharp blue eyes. She smiles warmly at all the rebels, and meets as many as she can, including Cassian, who is introduced by Draven.

“Ma’am, this is Captain Cassian Andor,” Draven says, using Cassian’s official-un-official Corellian Resistance rank, one he brought with him from Fest. “He’s one of our best Intelligence officers on Corellia. He was the one I sent to speak to Saw Gerrera, about a year ago now.”

“Of course,” Mothma says, shaking Cassian’s hand. “Thank you for your service, Captain Andor.”

“My pleasure,” Cassian says.

Bail Organa arrives, bringing with him his own team of advisors. Cassian watches Draven greet Organa, speaking in soft tones, but is interrupted from his observing by a yell.

“Aach!”

A grin splits Cassian’s face. He turns, and sure enough, it’s Leia Organa, seventeen years old, in white pants and white shirt, hair hanging down her back in one long braid.

“Hello, Princess,” Cassian says, giving her a short bow. Leia snorts.

“I thought we were past that nonsense,” she grumbles. She’s grown a couple inches since he last saw her, two years previously, but is still quite short, the top of her head barely the height of his shoulders.

“This isn’t your library in your Palace,” Cassian tells her. “There are expectations here.”

“Yeah, I know, we’re going official,” she says, her accent clipped and voice a little lower than Cassian remembers. She glances around the Corellian base, bustling with activity, as more ships come in.

Cassian already knows that Asori will not be on one of them. She couldn’t take the time away from the Royal Imperial Academy, and so she’s sending her second-in-command from the Coruscant Rebellion, a rebel Cassian never got to meet while he was there, whether because he just never saw them or because they joined after he left.

Cassian watches the scene, the ships and rebels and chatter, next to Leia, the two of them standing in silence, until he speaks.

“Are you working for your father?”

“Sort of,” Leia says. “He is a citizen of Alderaan, and I’ve recently been elected Imperial Senator for Alderaan.”

Cassian stares at her. “Oh. Congratulations. You’re… um…”

“Young. The word you’re looking for is young. Or, it better be.”

“It is. And you’re still looking to join the Alliance?”

She turns back to Cassian, raising an eyebrow. “I did say I’d see you in two years.”

“You did,” Cassian confirms. “I should tell you that I still go by my real name. You don’t have to call me Aach.”

“Spy work dry up? Transfer to something less glamorous?”

Cassian snorts. “Hardly. I was shot three times in the chest on Iego, saved by Angels, and just woke up from a four month coma.”

Leia stares at him for a minute, brown eyes wide. She whistles.

“Okay, I’ll allow it,” she says at last. She waits a beat and adds, “ _Angels?_ Really?”

“Really. They are very bright, and very tall. Kind.”

“I’ll say,” Leia says. “Did they say anything to you?”

Cassian thinks. He remembers coming across the Angel in the valley, the one who told him he was gray, that he had work to do. He wonders now if this “work” was what made the Angels save him. He wonders what good work they expect him to do, if he’s as gray as they seem to think he is.

“Nothing of import,” he says to Leia.

Leia laughs. “I doubt that.”

Cassian shrugs. He thinks of what Leia’s told him, her new position as Imperial Senator. “Are you going to spy for the Alliance?”

“Not officially,” she says. “And I won’t be as… involved with the Alliance as I’d like to be, not while I’m a senator. That was the deal I made with my father to get him to even bring me here.”

“But you had to be here.”

Leia looks at him. “Well, yes. I had to see this. Democracy, back from the dead. Not unlike yourself, huh?”

“My heart _did_ stop once or twice.”

“Aren’t you a hero.”

Cassian shakes his head. “No. Just a survivor.”

That’s how he sees himself, at least. As a survivor. It’s the one definition he’s managed to keep of himself over the course of his life.

“We’ll see,” Leia says, unconvinced. “Come on. I’ll get you a good seat next to me.”

The Declaration of Rebellion is being ratified in the mess hall, the biggest room the Corellian Resistance base has to offer. A long table has been set at the front of the room, a podium in the middle. Chairs face the table, lining the walls, creating only the tiniest of aisles. The room is already full to bursting with rebels, and Cassian follows Leia through the crowds that seem to part for her. He spots Kes and Shara talking to a few Twi’leks, sees recent (now, not-so-recent) recruit Alfie chatting with a group of Alderaanian soldiers, catches Melshi passing out celebratory bottles of whiskey from the Fel Swoop, ready to be opened.

The room is filled with chatter, in Basic and ten other languages, and Cassian smiles at it all.

It’s home. These people. The Corellian Resistance.

The Alliance.

_Home_.

Leia does have a good seat near the front, and snags the space next to her for Cassian. They watch as the Rebellion leaders enter the room, and take seats at the long table.

Cassian looks down the row of faces and is startled at the sight of Travia Chan.

She’s in her repulsor-chair, parked at the end of the table, hands clasped in her lap, and in deep conversation with the man standing at her side. He’s big, obviously muscular, with long gray hair and a strangely styled beard, hanging off the sides of his face. His eyes are very dark.

“Leia,” Cassian whispers. “Who is that?”

She follows his gaze. “That’s Travia Chan, and her chief of staff, Loom Carplin. They’re from the Atrivis Resistance Group.”

“The _what?_ ” Cassian exclaims, voice carrying.

“Kriff, Andor,” she hisses. “Aren’t you from the Atrivis Sector?”

“Yes, but there wasn’t an _Atrivis Resistance Group_ the last time I checked--”

“It was formed about a year ago,” Leia says. “The Fest Rebellion and the Mantooine Liberators got in touch, started cooperating together, and then brought in other resistance groups in the sector, forming the Atrivis Resistance Group. Mon met with them a few months back, and they’re here today to join the Alliance.”

Cassian takes this in, stunned. Travia had not yet tried to contact the Mantooine Liberators when he was last on Fest, and one of his parting suggestions to her was to do so. He wondered if that might’ve inspired her, or if Mantooine was the one to make the jump.

He thinks of Taraja, and desperately wishes she could’ve seen this.

Both he and Taraja knew that Fest and Mantooine have more in common than not, knew that it was possible to put aside hundreds of years of petty bickering, knew it was necessary for survival.

He’s glad the others have seen it now too.

He catches Travia’s eye, and recognizes the small smile that grows on her face. She winks at him, and jerks her head, a signal that he should speak to her after the meeting.

The Declaration signing is simple. Cassian watches as each rebellion leader vocally affirms their support, and then signs a physical document. He smiles when he watches Travia state her name and group, and then sign the Declaration, and he thinks of how proud he is of her, of the Fest Rebellion, of Nerezza, and Wada, and Gabriel, and Nonia Chinzano, and how badly he wishes they could see this moment.

He thinks, _Who knew that Fest could do so much_.

Cassian was six years old when he joined the Fest Rebellion as a child soldier, running messages and inconveniencing Imperial Walkers in the streets of Fulcra.

Cassian is now twenty-four years old, an assassin, a spy, a thief, a murderer, and a member of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.

Once the Declaration has been signed, the leaders vote Mon Mothma in as the Alliance Forces Commander-in-Chief, naming her the de facto head of the Alliance. She is a popular choice, is responsible for bringing all these Rebellion groups together, and the room erupts into applause when she accepts the position.

She stands, holding the Declaration of Rebellion, and waits for the room to quiet down. Once it has, she reads the Declaration for the assembled Alliance.

It is addressed directly to the Emperor, and lays out the goals of the Rebellion: to free the galaxy from fascist tyranny, to return to democracy, to end racism and genocide, to return equal rights to all, humans and nonhumans just the same.

“You have raised taxes without the consent of those taxed,” Mothma says. “You have murdered and imprisoned millions without benefit of trial.”

That last statement inevitably reminds Cassian of Lemniscate, and the prisoners he killed, as a cadet at the Royal Imperial Academy. Mothma’s accusation is not incorrect or unfounded; but there is at least one instance where such a killing was not done by an Imperial.

Cassian returns to the present to hear the final list of intentions.

“To bring about your destruction and the destruction of the Galactic Empire,” she says. “To make forever free all beings in the galaxy. To these ends, we pledge our property, our honor, and our lives.”

As soon as she finishes, the room erupts into applause again. But this time, it is raucous, filled with whoops and cheers, champagne bottles being popped open, and people embracing their neighbors, friends and strangers alike.

Cassian bumps his shoulder against Leia’s. “What did you think?”

She shrugs. “It’s good.”

“Good? That’s it?”

“I just mean…” Leia sighs. “Cassian. You’re twenty-four. You’ve been involved with Rebellions for most of your life, right?”

Eighteen years, to be exact. He nods.

“So, you don’t _need_ this,” Leia says. “You don’t need a Declaration of Rebellion. It’s exactly what you’ve been doing this whole time.”

“Maybe the Declaration is not for me,” Cassian says.

“What?”

“It’s for the galaxy,” Cassian says. “For people to see that there are others fighting, trying to make things right again. The Declaration will give people hope.”

“Hope.”

Cassian smiles. “Yes. It’s what keeps people going. It’s what rebellions are built on.”

He should know.

* * *

With the celebrations going on around him, Cassian tracks down Travia.

She smiles at the sight of him, and he bends down to hug her. They’ve known each other long enough for the familiarity; Travia can still remember him as a child.

“It’s good to see you, Andor,” she says.

“You too, Travia,” Cassian returns. “I heard about the Atrivis Resistance Group. That’s amazing.”

“You helped,” Travia says. “I was already feeling guilty about what you said, about getting in touch with Mantooine, when the Liberators were attacked by the Empire.”

“Attacked?”

“Massacred.”

Cassian is shocked. He stares at her, and his horror must creep into his expression, for Travia snags his sleeve and tugs him away from the festivities, out into the hall, where it’s quieter.

Cassian leans against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest, his recent scars pulling a little painfully. “What the hell happened?”

“We got wind of an Imperial Navy squadron gathering in the sector, about six months after you left,” Travia says. “Lingering, just close enough to get on our radar, but too far for us to gather any information on their purpose. A month later, they took off to Mantooine, and attacked the base of the Liberators. They all but took them out completely. Only a handful of survivors, including one of their senior leaders, Loom Carplin.”

“Who is now your chief of staff.”

She nods. “After that… It became apparent that we could not survive separately for much longer. We-regrouped on Generis.”

Generis is another planet in the Atrivis Sector, along with Fest and Mantooine, though it is far less populated, with a population of only a couple thousand people on the entire planet. Cassian never got to see it, but it’s said to be home to swift-moving rivers and jungles, with a hot climate more humid than that of Mantooine’s.

“No man’s land,” Travia explains. “We established a sector-wide base there, and called ourselves the Atrivis Resistance Group.”

Cassian nods. “And then Mon Mothma found you.”

“She was very impressed with what we’ve accomplished,” Travia says. “She told us about her vision, of a galaxy-wide Alliance. Loom and I were interested in all the help we could get, so we agreed. We signed a treaty on Generis to join an Alliance, and Mon invited us to see the signing of the Declaration of Rebellion today. We’re now called the Atrivis Sector Force.”

“Lots of name changes,” Cassian notes.

“Diplomacy is a hassle,” Travia agrees. “At least these Core World people don’t think we’re Wild Space laserbrained dirt farmers anymore.”

“Was that a common belief?”

“You came of age on Coruscant, Andor,” Travia says. “You tell me.”

She’s right.

“How’s Fest?” He asks.

Travia shrugs. “Gray. Cold. Stubborn.”

“The same.”

“The same,” she agrees.

Cassian tells Travia the most broad details he can share of his work in Intelligence (“Alliance Intelligence now,” Travia notes) while carefully leaving out the events of Iego, and his near-death experience. She’s still impressed with him, smiling and nodding.

(This is the last time Travia Chan sees Cassian Andor. He’ll be dead in two years.)

(News of his death will reach her, in the base of the Atrivis Sector Force, and she will look around, at the children running through the corridors, patching their coats, practicing their fighting technique, organizing crates of ammunition, and comforting one another, and she will think of Cassian Andor, and his legacy, and know he won’t be forgotten by them for a very, very long time.)

(She will be right.)

She shakes Cassian’s hand once more, and then goes to meet with Mon Mothma.

* * *

Cassian wanders back into the mess hall, but the noise is still daunting, and he can see Melshi leading a Corellian drinking song with an enthusiastic Alfie, and Kes and Shara laughing along.

He ducks back out, and runs into Loom Carplin.

“Oh,” the man says. “You’re Festian.”

It isn’t much of a greeting, but the words warm Cassian, fill him with pride. He can still remember a time when a Mantooian did not recognize him as Festian.

He grins.

“Yes, sir,” he says, taking Loom’s hand. “I’m Cassian Andor. I used to work with Travia, in the Fest Rebellion.”

“Oh, of course, call me Loom,” Loom says, smiling. He reminds Cassian a little of Sids. “Travia has told me about you. A pleasure, a pleasure.”

“I’m sorry about the Mantooine Liberators,” Cassian says.

“Ah.” Loom looks down for a moment before nodding, and meeting Cassian’s gaze. “Yes. Well. We died the way we wanted to; fighting the Empire.”

“Can’t ask for anything more.”

“Indeed.”

Cassian hesitates. “Were you with them for long?”

“Oh, yes. I was there at the very beginning.”

“Where were you based?”

“Mazl. I don’t know if you ever visited, but Mantooine is far too sparsely populated for an extensive network, unlike what I’ve seen of Fest.”

Cassian nods. “Yes, I’ve visited Mantooine a couple times. I was, uh, wondering… Did you know this one fighter--she would’ve been a girl, a child, she left when she was seventeen; Taraja Ya’qul?”

Loom’s face splits into his widest grin yet.

“Yes! _Yes!_ Oh, I adored Taraja. The strongest, smartest girl. Cunning, and so brave. Witty too, kept us all on our toes. We haven’t heard from her in years. Why? Is she here?”

He sounds so excited, so pleased, and Cassian is beginning to regret bringing Taraja up at all. But he also thinks the Mantooine Liberators should know what happened to her, what she did, and Loom is the closest thing left.

“No,” Cassian murmurs. “She, um… She died. Almost four years ago, on Coruscant.”

As he speaks, he realizes it’s true. Taraja has been dead for almost longer than they were together on Coruscant.

“Oh,” Loom breathes. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Sauda, Mosi, and Sefu are dead too,” Cassian says. “And Kolya, and Tully. They all died on Coruscant, within a few months of one another, fighting the Empire.”

“You knew them all?”

“Yes,” Cassian says. “But I… I knew Taraja the best.”

His voice betrays him, shakes and stutters, and Loom understands. His eyes fill with sympathy, and he squeezes Cassian’s shoulder in a comforting gesture.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says.

“She was brilliant, for the Coruscant Rebellion,” Cassian says. “They all were, the other Mantooians too, but I… I worked with Taraja more. She was amazing. We were lucky to have her.”

By that he also means, _I was lucky to have her_.

Loom infers as much. The older man nods his head.

“She lived for the cause,” he says. “I am glad her work continued after she left us. Was she happy on Coruscant?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think I… and the Rebellion… I think she was happy.”

“I believe you. Travia speaks very highly of you, Cassian.”

“I’m very grateful to her.”

“And she is to you. If you should ever tire of Corellia… There’s a place for you with us, back in the Atrivis Sector.”

Cassian nods. “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Loom laughs. “I don’t expect you to take us up on it. If you’re anything like Taraja, you’re eager to be in the thick of things. I can respect that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Loom,” Loom reminds him.

“Loom,” Cassian repeats. “Sorry.”

“I expect it’s a hard habit to break,” Loom says. “Travia told me about your work at the Royal Imperial Academy. Truly remarkable.”

Cassian shrugs. “It had to be done.”

“Not by just anyone.”

“Maybe,” Cassian says. He looks away from Loom’s adoring eyes and spots Leia, hovering in the doorway, two glasses of champagne in her hands.

“Am I interrupting?” She asks.

“Princess Leia,” Loom says, bowing deeply, his tall body bending almost in half. “No, of course not. Please excuse me.” He straightens, turning back to Cassian and shaking his hand. “A pleasure, Cassian Andor.”

He then repeats the farewell Taraja first said to Cassian on Mantooine, the wish for plentiful luck and good health.

Cassian smiles, and repeats the saying back flawlessly, as Taraja taught him.

“Good Mantooian,” Loom says approvingly. He nods, gives Leia a smile, and walks away.

Leia approaches Cassian, and passes him a champagne glass. “Mantooian, huh?”

“I only know a handful of words and phrases, so don’t test me on it.”

“Roger that,” Leia says, drily. She hesitates, and Cassian can see her frowning at him, chewing her lip, hesitating.

“Spit it out.”

“The Royal Imperial Academy?”

Cassian laughs. “I was a spy on Coruscant, remember?”

“At the _Royal Imperial Academy?_ ”

“I’m not nearly drunk enough for that story. And it’s very long.”

“Uh huh,” Leia says. “You’ll have to tell me about it someday though, yeah?”

“Sure.”

(He won’t. This is the last time Cassian Andor and Leia Organa will see each other.)

She hesitates again, and then says, “Taraja?”

Cassian sighs. “Mm. I might not have to be drunk for that.”

He looks at Leia, and thinks that maybe he can actually add one more to the list of people left in the galaxy who remember Taraja Ya’qul.

“I’ve told you before, but you remind me of her,” Cassian says. “She was just as… determined. Headstrong. Unafraid.”

“I’m sorry, Cassian.”

“Thank you. She’s been gone a while. It doesn’t hurt as much to talk about her.” He looks around the dark hall, points towards the party raging in the mess hall opposite them. “She would love this. What the Rebellion has accomplished. The Alliance. If her death helped any of this happen… She’d say it was worth it.”

“A true hero,” Leia notes.

“Yeah,” Cassian agrees. “She was.”

(Cassian Andor will die in two years. His final act, his last work for the Alliance, will be sent to a ship miles and miles above his dying body, to fall into the waiting hands of Leia Organa.)

Leia raises her glass of champagne, and Cassian mirrors her. “Well, then. To Taraja.”

Cassian smiles, meeting her eyes, and then he adds, “To the Alliance.”

(When asked what she has received, what Cassian Andor’s last feat has accomplished, Princess Leia will say one word: “Hope.”)

The clink of the glasses echoes in the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exeunt Travia, and Exeunt Leia. We've finally reached that point in the story where people are leaving, not because they died, but because Cassian did.
> 
> The descriptions of the signing of the Corellian Treaty, of the reading of the Declaration of Rebellion, the fate of the Mantooine Liberators, and the formation of the Atrivis Sector Force, were all based off the descriptions of these events in THE REBEL ALLIANCE SOURCEBOOK, from 1990. I have edited/described them slightly differently for this story. In the time since this book, the ways they went down have been edited, extrapolated on, or done away with entirely. (For example: outside the SOURCEBOOK, the Corellian Treaty signing was re-written to include Darth Vader's apprentice, and an appearance by Darth Vader. I don't care for this description of the event, so it does not exist in this transformative work.)
> 
> For the clarity of this story, only the events in this chapter, as described, should be considered.
> 
> Loom Carplin was the Old EU head of the Mantooine Liberators, and did become Travia Chan's chief of staff for the Atrivis Sector Force.
> 
> My best friend is one chapter away from finishing her reading, and then I'm very close to finishing my editing, so I will hopefully have some time this weekend to post the rest of the story!


	38. Arrival and Departure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-four years old when he finally realizes exactly who he is, and what he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is another capital-G Grim chapter. 
> 
> Content warnings: descriptions of torture, thoughts of suicide.

Cassian is twenty-four years old when he finally realizes exactly who he is, and what he does.

In the days following the Declaration of Rebellion, the Empire is swamped by star systems openly threatening to revolt, to join the Alliance to Restore the Republic. It is mayhem across the galaxy, as the Empire deploys Star Destroyers and cruisers throughout the galaxy, everywhere from the Core Worlds to the Outer Rim. Mon Mothma spends the time desperately attempting to get these openly seceding planets to back down from their exuberance, their open disdain for the Empire, but most of her efforts are to no avail: the Empire swoops in and suppresses the “Secession Worlds” within weeks.

Not all is lost, though. Many of these planets manage to send resources, including money, ships, and new recruits, to Alliance outposts before the Empire can get to them.

Mon Mothma decides they need a new, hidden, and semi-permanent base.

Chandrila, Alderaan, and Corellia cannot hope to openly house rebels, not after the Declaration. The risk is too great for a direct attack from the Empire. Mon Mothma sets off to the Outer Rim to find a suitable system, far out of the way but capable of sustaining life, and returns with an announcement that the Alliance is headed for Dantooine.

Cassian is somewhat familiar with Dantooine. He’s never been there, but it’s almost exactly halfway between Fest and Sernpidal, on the edge of Wild Space.

Dantooine is sparsely populated, with only about 1,000 native Dantari living there. The Dantari are best described as a primitive, near-human species; they share many physical similarities with humans, but are less developed, and lack technology of any kind. But they’re peaceful, and this is what really matters to the Alliance.

“Have you ever been to Dantooine?” Cassian asks Shara.

He’s helping her pack up her and Kes’ room for the move to Dantooine. Kes’ squad has recently been given the title of the Pathfinders, with an official function as a special forces unit, and he’s running a mission on Utapau, and will meet up with the rest of the Alliance on Dantooine. Cassian has yet to be declared fit for active duty, and so he’s trying to make himself useful wherever he can.

And he’s also trying to be a good friend.

“No,” Shara says, folding bedsheets. “I’ve heard about it, though. It’s got a lot of grass. Savannas, and mountains. Temperate. Nice.”

“Corellia’s nice.”

Shara smiles. “Will you miss it, Cassian?”

“Corellia?” Cassian checks. She nods. He considers this, considers Corellia, and then shrugs. “No. Not really.”

Corellia isn’t home.

He won’t miss it.

He is a little disappointed that he never managed to find the time to visit one of Corellia’s beaches.

The Alliance makes the move to Dantooine.

Dantooine is as Shara said it would be. From space, the planet is a mixture of rich olive, blue, and brown colors, with large continents that dominate the world. The air is warm when Cassian steps off the ship, and he looks around, spotting tall, dry mountains in the distance, and yellow grasses that rise to his waist.

He squints, and sees that lavender is mixed in with the yellow and green grass.

Dantooine might be plain, but it is also pretty.

He likes it.

The Alliance decides to set up base near what was once a jedi enclave, a run-down building the jedi used for teaching. The enclave is known to the Dantari as “The Place of Fallen Rocks”, and a place to be avoided at all costs. Cassian assumes the enclave has been given the name because of its derelict status, the fact that it looks prone to collapse at any moment. Shara suggests that it might actually be called that because the Dantari have passed down generational memories of the jedi training there, and moving rocks with their minds.

Cassian mostly doesn’t think about the ruins of the jedi enclave. None of it matters now; the jedi are gone.

Cassian enlists K-2SO to help him move his things into his room. He’s an officer, so he’s been allocated a room of his own, four walls and a door, although it’s so small it’s more like a glorified broom closet.

He doesn’t mind. Cassian has grown up sharing space with others, and he thinks having any extra space would be a difficult adjustment.

K-2SO looks around the space, holding the cot Cassian will be sleeping on in his arms. “This is where you’ll live?”

“Yes,” Cassian says, tossing his duffel onto the dirt ground. The base has no actual structure at this point, beyond the enclave, which is being stabilized. Presently, base is largely a series of connected tents; the rebels will be building and living on Dantooine at the same time.

“When will we have a mission?” K-2SO asks.

“Soon,” Cassian says. “Hopefully.”

“I hope so too. I’m very bored.”

“We just got here. You’ve never been to Dantooine before.”

K-2SO swivels his head around abruptly, and Cassian can tell that if he could narrow his eyes, he would. “How do you know I’ve never been to Dantooine?”

“I’m your master, aren’t I?” Cassian says, unpacking his blasters and lining them up on the ground, not looking at K-2SO as he speaks. “I should know these things about you.”

Cassian doesn’t know how to tell K-2SO that K-2SO had told him he’d only ever been on Coruscant, but that Cassian then took him to Mantooine, Fest, Corellia, and Iego. He won’t remember.

K-2SO looks away, and unfolds the cot for lack of anything else to do. “ _I_ don’t even know these things about me.”

“You might be surprised by this, but you don’t know everything, Kay.”

“Kay?”

Cassian pauses, looking back up. K-2SO is staring at him again. Cassian quickly realizes his mistake.

“I… Sorry,” he says. “Slipped out.”

“Kay,” K-2SO repeats. “I think I like it. Yes. You may call me that, Cassian.”

Cassian nods, smiling a little, but he knows nothing about this is good. “Understood, Kay.”

* * *

Cassian and K-2SO are given a new mission two weeks after settling on Dantooine.

Draven always looks grim and serious, but he somehow looks even more grim and serious than usual, as he gives Cassian the details of the new mission.

“The Empire has recently established a secret bunker on Jenoport,” he says.

Cassian frowns. “Jenoport… I’m not familiar with that system. Where is it?”

“The Unknown Regions,” Draven says. “Wild Space. Completely unincorporated territory. We’re only aware of it because we recently acquired a stolen manifest from an Imperial base on Ithor, with records of shipments being sent to Jenoport.”

“Why would the Empire--”

“Exactly,” Draven says. “Why. Your mission is to infiltrate this new base and discover what it’s purpose is, what the Empire is using the bunker for. Reconnaissance. I want you back on base within a month. Understood, Captain Andor?”

The Alliance has openly embraced the military ranking system used by a handful of the earlier Rebellion groups, Fest among them, and has made referring to others by their ranks mandatory. Cassian still isn’t used to it, though he really ought to be by now.

“Yes, sir,” he says. “Am I taking K-2SO?”

Draven looks uncomfortable. “Yes.”

“You think it’s a bad idea.”

“I think we never did find out what caused his… malfunction, on Iego,” Draven says, carefully. “I am less inclined to trust him with one of my best Intelligence officers, but I have been… overruled. An Imperial droid will be of benefit to your cover on an Imperial base.

“However,” Draven continues, and he makes sure Cassian is watching him, and listening. “However, if he should behave in any strange, or unexpected way… You shut him down. By any means necessary. Is that clear, Captain?”

Cassian understands exactly what Draven means. He’s really only prioritizing Cassian over K-2SO, a move entirely expected, and probably wise.

The suggestion of killing K-2SO is still difficult for Cassian to accept.

“Yes, sir,” he says.

“Good,” Draven says.

Cassian gets up to leave the room, but is stopped by Draven’s voice.

“Wait; I almost forgot.”

Cassian turns around, to see Draven reach into a box at his feet.

He pulls out a steel gray Imperial officer’s uniform, and holds it out to Cassian.

“Asori Joshi told me that you once meant to pose as an Imperial officer called Captain Eli Willix,” Draven says. “But never got to use the cover. I imagine now is as good a time as any.”

Cassian stares at the uniform, taking in the dark, monochromatic gray that dominates it, the tall black boots resting in the box. It is so familiar, and so painful, and his vibroblade scar seems to ache just at the sight of the thing, and the memories it conjures.

He’s done so many terrible things while wearing an Imperial officer’s uniform.

Taraja died while he watched, wearing that uniform.

He killed Zeferino while wearing that uniform.

Cassian swallows, and nods.

He takes the uniform from Draven.

* * *

Cassian and K-2SO fly to Jenoport.

When they’re an hour away, Cassian changes into the gray Imperial officer’s uniform.

He looks at himself in the mirror, and realizes his hair is too long, both on his head and face, and that he’ll need to cut it off to make himself presentable, and passable, as an Imperial officer. He’ll be too strange otherwise, too obviously an imposter.

He steels himself, and then proceeds to give himself a haircut, and a shave.

K-2SO stares at him when he returns to the cockpit.

“What?” Cassian snaps.

“You look… different, Cassian,” he says.

“Well-spotted,” Cassian says.

“I don’t know how to feel about it.”

Cassian looks at K-2SO. “You don’t… like it.”

“You look strange. You don’t look like yourself.”

“I’m with you there,” Cassian mutters.

He looks out the front glass window of the ship for a moment, considering, remembering Iego, and then he turns back to K-2SO.

“You know I’m me, right?” He checks.

“What?”

“You know that… you recognize me, even when I’m wearing this uniform?”

If K-2SO could frown, he’d certainly be doing so right now. “Of course, Cassian.”

“Okay. Good.”

He can feel K-2SO staring at him, but he steadfastly avoids the droid’s gaze.

“When we get inside, you’re going to have to hack into the security system,” Cassian says.

“Okay.”

“That might involve hacking directly into another security droid.”

He looks up, as K-2SO has frozen up.

“I imagine that will be… strange,” Cassian says quietly, though he thinks _strange_ doesn’t even begin to cover it. “But it is the quickest, most knowledgeable and accessible way. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Cassian,” K-2SO says, voice somehow more monotonous than usual.

Cassian nods and looks away, at deep space, as it whips past them.

Their arrival on Jenoport is much smoother than Cassian had anticipated. The planet is little more than glorified space rock, with only a handful of cities on its surface.

The bunker is an unobtrusive gray building, and Cassian only knows it’s the Imperial bunker they’re looking for because of the coordinates provided by Draven.

Cassian and K-2SO land in the city closest to the bunker, and then make their way towards it.

The secret bunker is quite small, but well-armed, with Imperial Walkers and deathtroopers crawling all over the place. There are no windows on the building, which almost looks downtrodden, and derelict.

Cassian has no idea what the Empire is doing here.

He walks into the bunker with K-2SO at his side, none of the stormtroopers or deathtroopers bothering to confront him on his purpose; the Imperial officer’s uniform works as a shield.

K-2SO does have to hack into a security droid almost identical to himself. They corner one in an alcove, and drag it into a cleaning supplies closet with them. K-2SO turns the droid with more gentleness than Cassian has come to expect from him, before plugging into the droid.

He informs Cassian that communications are down, expected to be fixed and re-opened within two days. The bunker, whatever it may be, is operating on its own for the time being.

Cassian considers all of this, and makes a decision.

He finds the commander running the place, and, suppressing his Festian accent like he did during his years on Coruscant, he introduces himself as Captain Eli Willix, of Imperial Intelligence on Coruscant. He says he’s there to oversee their operation. He stands straight, and speaks with clarity and unveiled authority, just as he watched his teachers at the Royal Imperial Academy, and superior Intelligence officers on Coruscant, speak.

The commander of the bunker has no way of confirming Cassian’s story. But he also doesn’t appear to want to; he takes in Cassian’s stature, his cool gaze, and goes with it.

He introduces himself as Commander Loren Comax, and says he’s happy to have Cassian there. He offers to give Cassian a tour of the bunker, an offer that Cassian accepts with enthusiasm.

This is how Cassian learns that the secret Imperial bunker on Jenoport is operating as an under-the-radar detention center.

It is, more or less, a place for the Empire to openly torture without the galaxy knowing.

Cassian, and the Alliance, have known for a long time that the Empire tortures its prisoners. Their methods vary, from droids made to torture exclusively, to more primitive methods involving racks and electricity. Cassian studied a history of torture in the galaxy while at the Academy, and came away from it feeling vaguely nauseous and completely unsettled.

He only learned more about it in Imperial Intelligence, which had a branch engaged in advancing torture methods for the Empire. Cassian never had to deal with any of its members directly, but he read enough reports, and heard enough stories, to feel like he was part of it anyway.

This is something else though.

He follows Comax through the halls of the secret bunker (which is unnamed, mostly referred to by the planet name of Jenoport) and hears the sounds of screams, coming in all directions. He witnesses unknown people, humans and nonhumans, tortured with nerve inductors, in sensory deprivation chambers, and given a cocktail of neurotoxins. The prisoners’ faces all wear similar masks of despair and pain. Some look completely hopeless, while others look alarmingly blank. Comex tells him that the vast majority of these prisoners were in other detention centers around the galaxy, but that they didn’t break, and that’s what got them sent to Jenoport.

“This man here is one of our toughest subjects,” he tells Cassian, and jerks his head to the last chamber.

Cassian looks in, and freezes up. He recognizes the man.

It’s Alfie.

Alfie, who joined the Rebellion over a year ago, a recruit from Rishi, a planet that was seeing the Empire brutally exterminating its native species. Alfie, who Cassian recommended for Draven’s black ops team, because he could recognize Alfie’s fire as similar to his own. Alfie, who is friendly to Cassian and everyone he meets. Alfie, who just wants to help, who wants to end the Empire’s reign.

Alfie, who is now being tortured with actual fire.

Cassian watches as an unknown Imperial officer carefully presses open flame to Alfie’s battered and broken body. Alfie screams and howls, shaking with the pain, but does not say any intelligible words.

Comex sighs, and turns to Cassian.

“Want to give it a shot, Captain Willix?”

Torn from his silent horror, Cassian turns. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re here to report back on our operation to Coruscant,” Comex says. “I’d like you to really get a _feel_ for the good work we do here. I insist.”

And he opens the door to the chamber, and gestures for Cassian to go inside.

Cassian cannot move. He cannot possibly do this.

He’s back at Lemniscate again, being handed a sniper rifle.

He’s crouching on the floor next to Sebastian, the Rodian blaster in his hand.

He’s walking with Draven in the Political Center on Anchoron, detonite in his arms.

He’s an assassin. He’s a murderer. He’s an executioner.

But he is not a torturer.

Certainly not a torturer of rebels he knows, has worked with, has eaten with, and laughed with.

Or.

He _was_.

Not anymore.

Cassian walks into the chamber, and becomes a torturer.

The unknown torturer already inside the room hands him the flame, and he takes it, curling his fingers around the gray lighter it’s bursting out from. Up close, he can see now that Alfie is covered in bruises in every stage of healing, with cuts littering his torso like goosebumps, and old burn marks lining his arms and legs.

He has been here for some time.

Cassian had no idea that he’d been missing. He wonders if Draven even knows, or if Alfie was supposed to be deep undercover, on a mission somewhere, and him not getting in contact with the Alliance for a while isn’t odd.

Cassian swallows, and makes the mistake of looking at Alfie.

The man’s soft brown eyes, rimmed with red and shadowy bags of exhaustion, widen when they take in Cassian’s face. He recognizes him, Cassian knows, and Cassian isn’t sure if that makes what he’s about to do better or worse.

He tears his eyes away from Alfie, and he holds the flame to his skin.

Alfie screams.

Cassian feels another part of his conscience fall away.

He wonders how much is left of him that could still be considered human.

He doesn’t know how long he tortures Alfie. Any amount of time is too long. All he knows is that eventually, Comex sighs, and Cassian switches the flame off, and he follows Comex out of the chamber without a backward glance at Alfie.

“How long has he been here?” Cassian asks Comex.

The commander sighs. “Two months. He came to us from a detention center on Corellia. A rebel spy, infiltrating the Imperial Army base. He refuses to tell us anything about the information he stole, or the Alliance.”

Cassian feels a rush of pride, and deep respect for Alfie. He keeps his face straight though, and only nods.

He walks away, Comex at his side.

* * *

Later that night, Cassian sneaks into the wing of the bunker where the prisoners are kept when they are not being tortured.

He’s still in his Imperial officer’s uniform, and so the stormtroopers guarding the wing only nod at him, stepping aside for him to pass. He glances into the cells as he walks, looking at the prisoners’ faces. They either shy away from him, or meet his gaze full-on, eyes dark with resistance and fury. They see him, in the uniform, and see just another Imperial lackey.

Cassian wishes he could tell them the truth, but he can’t.

He finally locates Alfie’s cell.

Alfie is asleep, curled up in a fetal position on the floor, shivering and trembling. Cassian hesitates, wonders if he should just leave him be, but he has questions, and he needs to apologize.

“Alfie. _Alfie_.”

His voice is soft, but it’s enough to wake Alfie up. He blinks, looking at the ceiling, and then turns his head, spotting Cassian kneeling on the gray stone floor, fingers wrapped around the bars of his cell.

“Cassian,” Alfie whispers, and his voice is a dull croak. He doesn’t move from the floor.

“Draven sent me here,” Cassian says quickly. “We just heard about this place, and he sent me to scope it out. I had no idea, though, that you… I… Alfie, I’m so sorry.”

“‘S okay,” Alfie slurs. “I understand. You had to do it. You were following orders.”

(It is an accusation Cassian has charged himself with, and will be charged with by someone else in two years.)

Cassian sighs. “I’m not sure that’s good enough.”

“It is,” Alfie says. “For the Alliance. The Rebellion.”

His voice is lethargic; he’s fading fast.

Cassian presses as close as he can to the bars.

“Does Draven know you’re missing?” He asks.

“No,” Alfie whispers. “I’m not expected to check in until… How long have I been here?”

“Two months.”

“Another month, then,” Alfie says.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Cassian whispers. “Do you hear me, Alfie? I’m going to get you out of here. I promise.”

Alfie nods his head, sluggishly.

“Good,” he murmurs. “I don’t want to die, Cassian. I don’t… I don’t want to die. Not in this place.”

“I understand.”

“My daughter,” Alfie tries.

Cassian stares at him. “You have a daughter?”

“Back on Rishi,” Alfie says. “Her mother and I… We disagreed. Separated. My little girl, her name is Amalie. She’s seven.”

“Kriff, Alfie, I had no idea.”

“I can’t die here,” Alfie says. “Not without telling her that I love her, and that I’m so sorry for leaving her. So sorry.” He looks up at Cassian, and his eyes are filled with tears. “I want to see her grow up, Cassian. I want to see her again. I want to _live_.”

“You will,” Cassian says.

Alfie nods, eyes a little more hopeful.

“I promise you, Alfie. You will.”

It is not a promise Cassian will keep.

* * *

Cassian returns to the bunker the next day.

He now knows everything he needs to for Draven, knows what the secret bunker’s purpose is, and why it’s so off-the-radar. He knows how many people work in the bunker, how many prisoners are housed in the bunker, and the methods the Empire is using to torture them. He should leave now, while communications with Coruscant are still down, but could be turned on at any time.

But he can’t leave. He has to free Alfie, and take him back to Dantooine.

He just needs a little time to come up with a plan.

The Imperial officer’s uniform can only get him so far.

K-2SO lingers close to Cassian, shadowing him through the halls. K-2SO has been remarkably steady the whole mission, has come across as any other KX-series security droid, there to escort Cassian on his trip. He’s shown no bizarre or inexplicable behavior, and Cassian relishes in the opportunity to tell Draven as much when they get back to base.

He rounds the corner of the hallway, headed to the room he’s to meet Comex in, and feels his calm mood evaporate.

He’s looking through a large glass window, into a room tiled with white, a stark contrast to the rest of the bunker. Sitting against the far wall, head lolling to the side, body even more broken than it was the night before, skin so pale it practically melts into the wall, is Alfie.

“Good morning, Captain Willix,” Comex says.

“What is this?” Cassian asks, doing his best to keep his voice largely neutral, with a hint of curiosity.

Comex sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. “Prisoner 4589 was subjected to a final round of facilitation today--” and by facilitation, Cassian knows he means torture “--but did not submit. We have no choice but to terminate him.”

And by terminate, Comex means execute.

Cassian’s breath catches.

He stares at Alfie through the glass.

They are both out of time.

Cassian cannot save him.

“I see,” Cassian murmurs.

Comex looks at him. “Would you like to do the honors, Captain? There is very little honor to be found in executing an unarmed man, but, well… He _is_ rebel scum, and they are no better than vermin.”

“I…”

Cassian knows that Comex will find it very strange, almost suspicious, if Cassian declines his invitation now. Cassian has tortured Alfie, has listened to Comex’s talk on the bunker, has watched the vile and despicable treatment of humans and nonhumans around the building. If Cassian were to say no now, Comex might decide he’s worth investigating, and with communications at the bunker about to be fixed, might decide to keep Cassian here until he can send a message to Coruscant, to establish if Captain Eli Willix both exists and was sent from Imperial Intelligence there.

Imperials are eager to kill rebel spies, none more so than officers.

Cassian nods his head, and accepts Comex’s offer, and damns himself.

He reaches for the holster at his waist, and he pulls out his black Imperial blaster, the one he’d brought with him from Dantooine in order to accessorize his gray Imperial officer’s uniform, a model identical to the pistol he used to kill his brother on Coruscant.

He opens the door, and walks into the white room.

Alfie lifts his head, peering up into the bright light, and recognizes Cassian approaching him. Cassian watches Alfie’s eyes widen, his face beginning to brighten, and Cassian knows he must move quickly, because Alfie has no idea what’s about to happen.

He might think he’s being rescued, in which case he will blow Cassian’s cover.

And if he thinks he’s being rescued, then he might never know what really happened to him, if Cassian is fast enough.

Cassian raises the pistol, but still sees the realization cross Alfie’s face, sees his mouth open in a round ‘o’ of horror and shock.

Cassian shoots Alfie, landing a perfect shot in his forehead.

Alfie slumps over, dead.

(It is the same shot that killed Zeferino. It is the same shot that killed Nerezza.)

Cassian stares down at him, and remembers their last conversation.

“ _I don’t want to die, Cassian. I don’t… I don’t want to die. Not in this place._ ”

“ _I’m going to get you out of here. I promise._ ”

“ _I want to see her grow up, Cassian. I want to see her again. I want to_ live _._ ”

“ _You will. I promise you, Alfie. You will._ ”

Cassian has murdered Alfie. He’s failed him, in every possible way.

He walks out of the white room, returning to Comex. He avoids K-2SO’s look, thankful for his silence.

“Incredible shot,” Comex says warmly. “Very clean. My best executioners couldn’t have done it. Where did you study?”

“The Royal Imperial Academy, sir,” Cassian says, and it is not a lie.

He’s beginning to think it’s his most real truth.

“Of course,” Comex says. “Well, we’re done here. Come, I’ll show you where we dispose of the bodies.”

The place where they dispose of the bodies is a pit about two miles away from the bunker. It is an open, gray, rocky hole in the planet, and there are stacks and stacks of bodies within, decomposing, nameless, and forgotten.

It is yet another indignity that awaits Alfie.

It is yet another way that Cassian has failed him.

* * *

Cassian takes his leave at the end of the day.

Comex takes it in stride, having shown Cassian everywhere around the base that he could, unsurprised that Cassian is leaving now. He tells Cassian that he’ll accept a transfer at any time, should Cassian decide to join their operation on Jenoport.

“Aside from executioner, you’d make a fine torturer,” he tells Cassian, sounding far too cheery for a man responsible for such pain and terror.

Cassian isn’t alarmed by the compliment. He thinks that of course he’d make a fine torturer. He’s cruel, and resolute, and obedient.

He isn’t good.

He and K-2SO make their way back to the city their ship is in.

About two blocks away from the ship, Cassian finds he has to stop.

“Go to the ship,” he tells K-2SO. “I have to check something.”

“Cassian--”

“Go, Kay!” Cassian yells, and his voice is not his own.

K-2SO, more compliant than he’s ever been, more than Cassian thinks he likes him to be, nods and walks away, headed in the direction of the ship. Cassian turns, and darts into a dark side alley, lit only by the stars and heady moon above.

He leans against a wall and collapses, sliding to the dirty street ground.

He doesn’t sob. He doesn’t speak. He simply sits, staring at the Imperial blaster in his hands, and feels cold tears silently fall down his face.

The night is chilly, and still, and Cassian thinks he should stay here forever.

He thinks then, at least, he would stop doing so much harm.

He thinks of Alfie, of his warm brown eyes, his loud laugh, his determination to save his homeworld. He thinks of Alfie’s last words, his resilience, his will to live in spite of weeks of torture, the love and adoration in his voice when he spoke of his young daughter.

There is a little girl on Rishi who will never see her father again, and it’s thanks to Cassian.

Cassian feels like he’s both lost in unbearable agony, and completely numb.

He feels like stone, like the gray stone that covers Fest, immovable, blank, and dreary.

Something to be removed. Something to be destroyed.

He thinks of the last time he felt anything like this, and he thinks it must’ve been after killing Sebastian. This is the same, but so different too. He didn’t know Alfie as well as he knew Sebastian. He didn’t torture Sebastian like he tortured Alfie.

But he murdered them both, in the name of the cause, for the Alliance.

It is not enough. It cannot be enough.

Because this is _different_. Cassian killed Alfie because of a chance that Comex would hear his refusal and realize that Cassian was not who he said he was. That Comex would detain Cassian and K-2SO on Jenoport, and then kill them.

Cassian killed Alfie because it was either the Alliance lose one man, or lose two men and a droid.

He looked at the odds, looked at the numbers, and determined that the greater good, this supposed thing, should be the priority.

He thought like a droid.

Impersonal. Disinterested. Single-minded. Uncaring of depth, of whether the morally right thing to do--refuse to kill his fellow rebel, his friend--was the only thing that should be done.

Cassian leans against the wall, wearing a gray Imperial officer’s uniform, holding an Imperial blaster, and thinks he is no better than the Empire he despises.

He isn’t sure he can come back from this.

_Everything we do, we do for the Rebellion. It’s justified._

_Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion._

_I’m justified_.

Taraja was the one to talk him down the last time he was like this, but she isn’t here anymore.

He’ll have to deal with it on his own.

He’ll have to walk away.

 _Get up_ , Cassian tells himself, but he can’t move.

He’s startled by a voice.

“Cassian.”

It’s K-2SO, standing over him, having somehow managed to approach Cassian without him noticing, which tells Cassian that he’s in more trouble than he’s realized. K-2SO is loud.

Cassian stares up at K-2SO, and he knows he must look a mess, holding the blaster, tears on his face.

“Cassian?” K-2SO asks.

“What am I, Kay?” Cassian asks.

“ _Someone who does the terrible things no one else can,” Taraja says. “For the Rebellion._ ”

“An Alliance Intelligence officer,” says K-2SO, and he is not wrong, but Cassian thinks this answer is inadequate.

Still, he nods, and looks back down at the blaster.

“You are crying,” K-2SO says.

“Yeah,” Cassian says, raising a hand and wiping the tears off his face. “I do that, sometimes.”

“It is not becoming of an Alliance officer.”

Cassian laughs a little at that. “No, it is not.”

“I should not watch you cry.”

Cassian doesn’t have a response to that. This is not the first time K-2SO has seen him cry.

“I can volunteer for a memory wipe,” K-2SO says. “In case your continued dignity, and service, demands it.”

That removes whatever beginnings of a smile Cassian had on his face. It is a generous, kind offer, and it is reminiscent of the old K-2SO, who doesn’t exist anymore, because he did have his memory wiped.

“You’ve already had your memory wiped, Kay,” Cassian murmurs.

K-2SO stills. “What? No, I haven’t.”

“You don’t remember. It was a memory wipe.”

“Oh,” K-2SO says. “Did I see you cry before?”

“Well, you did,” Cassian says.

Because K-2SO had seen him cry, on the ship on the way to Mantooine, when K-2SO had coached him through a panic attack. He hadn’t said, then, that it was unbecoming of Cassian to cry, to sob through his grief; instead he’d comforted him, affirmed he understood Cassian’s pain, reminded him that he was there.

This K-2SO does none of that, and it is only another cruel reminder of how different he is now, how Cassian’s friend is long gone.

“But that’s not why your memory was wiped,” Cassian says. “Please don’t… I can’t tell you what happened. But I did not have your memory wiped. I didn’t want it to happen. You were my friend, and I…”

He sighs, shaking his head.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter now,” he says, sounding almost as hopeless as he feels. “None of it.”

K-2SO stands over him, staring down at Cassian, and Cassian wonders what could possibly be going through the droid’s mind, what he could be thinking.

“I... _am_ your friend, Cassian,” K-2SO says, and he surprises Cassian. “You said ‘You were my friend’. You told me to call you by your first name. Does that not make us friends, Cassian?”

And Cassian doesn’t know.

This is K-2SO, but this isn’t K-2SO. He talks like he always has, uncomfortably honest and rude, but he’s more quickly convinced to follow Cassian’s orders. He walks differently, displays a little more grace and confidence in his movements than he did in the years with Cassian before, and Cassian thinks this change is due to programmers who were more gentle with their reprogramming, more aware.

K-2SO doesn’t casually talk to Cassian as they fly, but rather, sits in silence unless prompted.

He is more respectful to Alliance officers.

He doesn’t know Taraja’s name, or who she was.

He only knows Cassian as his master, and not the man who found him in a Coruscant hangar, and reprogrammed him, in an effort to make him a better being, something good.

“I don’t know,” Cassian says, to K-2SO’s question.

And it’s the truth, but it breaks Cassian’s heart.

It would’ve hurt the old K-2SO too.

But this one doesn’t react, only stares.

Cassian gets to his feet, legs still a little shaky. K-2SO holds his arms out, as if to steady Cassian, but Cassian shakes his head, stepping away. K-2SO reaches forward, to carry the blaster, but Cassian moves faster, and returns it to his holster without comment.

“Let’s go,” Cassian says.

K-2SO walks alongside him back to the ship.

Cassian takes off the gray Imperial officer’s uniform as soon as he’s inside the ship, tossing it haphazardly into a corner, out of sight. He pulls on his tan Corellian-cut field jacket, and remembers the lullaby pill in the pocket.

He lingers on the thought for a moment, before putting it out of his mind.

He shivers at the regret that follows the thought.

They’re quiet as they go through the pre-flight checklist, K-2SO putting in the coordinates for Dantooine without comment. Cassian guides the ship off Jenoport, not bothering to look down, to watch the gray rock slip from sight, back into the dark.

“Kay,” he says, as the ship jumps into hyperspace.

“Yes, Cassian?”

“Don’t tell Draven,” Cassian says. “Don’t tell him about Alfie. The man I killed. Don’t tell him.”

Cassian will tell Draven that he saw Alfie on Jenoport, and that he watched Alfie be executed. But he can’t tell him that he was the one to do it. He thinks it’d lead to questions, to specifics, and Cassian isn’t convinced it’s an interrogation he can handle without losing whatever grip he has left on his composure, his stability, his sentience.

He needs to be able to walk away from Jenoport, and Alfie, or else he will not be able to go on.

And he has to go on. Stopping now is an impossibility.

It needs to all have been worth it, or worth _something_.

Cassian understands there is no absolution in his future, no forgiveness possible. There isn’t a force in the galaxy strong enough for all the crimes Cassian needs to atone for. The murders, the assassinations, the thefts, the beatings, the executions. And now, the torturing. There isn’t even a force in the galaxy that would be a strong enough punishment for everything he’s done.

He thinks of the torture methods he witnessed the Empire implementing on Jenoport, and he thinks fifty years of that would still not be enough of a punishment.

Cassian may not have given his life yet, but he knows he’s given his soul, his inner peace, his conscience, for the Rebellion, and these are worth more than his life.

Cassian has always known that he lives in an unkind galaxy, has known since he was a child, but he fully realizes that it is also an unfair one.

It must be, if despicable, cruel men like him get to live, while kind and strong men like Alfie have to die.

An unfair galaxy, where Taraja bleeds out in the Galactic Opera House.

An unfair galaxy, where eleven-year-old Sebastian is killed in his own bed.

An unfair galaxy, where a mother and two children are blown to pieces in a bombing on Anchoron.

 _I’m not good_ , Cassian thinks, and it is a resolution that buries itself in his head, cements itself there.

He fears it is a sentiment he will think even as he dies, wherever that is.

He thinks, in a fair galaxy, his death would be silent, in a grimy alley, unobserved, unnoticed, unremarkable.

He thinks he deserves the worst kind of death for a rebel: not just unfinished, but unknown.

Something that doesn’t merit so much as a footnote in a history book.

(This is, of course, not how Cassian Andor dies in two years.)

Cassian is twenty-four years old.

With K-2SO monitoring the ship, he walks into the cabin, and lies down on the cot there.

He closes his eyes.

He somehow manages to keep himself from taking the lullaby pill in his jacket.

He lets his guilt sing him to sleep.

It is the lullaby that will send him off to sleep, every night, for the rest of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lullaby pill, a canon thing, was introduced and described in Chapter 35.
> 
> The descriptions of the days immediately following the Declaration of Rebellion came from THE REBEL ALLIANCE SOURCEBOOK.
> 
> Dantooine and jedi enclave descriptions based off Wookieepedia information.
> 
> As mentioned earlier, “Willix” is a canon alias of Cassian Andor, though the when/where/why is unknown, and this is what I did with it.
> 
> The ROGUE ONE novelization by Alexander Freed includes this passage: “On Jenoport, K-2 had found Cassian staring at his blaster with tears on his face…. K-2 had volunteered for a memory wipe in case Cassian’s ‘continued dignity and service demanded it.’” There’s also a note that Draven did not know what happened on Jenoport. There was no other background information for this event, including the why/when, and so this is where I went with it. This is also the only mention of a place called Jenoport anywhere in canon, so Jenoport as an Imperial detention center, and unknown Wild Space glorified rock, was made up by me.
> 
> I know I keep threatening this, but I finally have a confirmed date/time for posting the remainder of this story: tomorrow (April 7) around 4:30-6 p.m. U.S. PST, after I get home from school/work. (Long time frame because of formatting difficulties.) If you've subscribed, you're going to get several emails about several new chapters.


	39. Imago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-five years old, and working for the Alliance to Restore the Republic as a recruitment agent in the Albarrio Sector.

Cassian is twenty-five years old, and working for the Alliance to Restore the Republic as a recruitment agent in the Albarrio Sector.

He was given the new assignment quite recently, by a more-sour-faced-than-usual Draven. From that expression, Cassian had gathered that the assignment was not Draven’s idea, and understood that the General was not pleased with it, and had likely attempted to get Cassian out of it.

But the order had come from, of all people, Mon Mothma.

And as Mothma is the head of the Alliance, there is nothing Draven can do to dissuade her, not without resorting to arguing, or complaining, and Mothma has the power to ground him or demote him.

Cassian is unsure as to why he’s been given the recruitment position. It’s barely under the umbrella of Alliance Intelligence, and certainly isn’t something Draven has ever asked him to do before, as part of his unit.

Recruitment work can be boring, and tedious, and quiet.

It is, in some ways, the most peaceful, simplest work to be done for the Alliance.

Cassian thinks this is why Mon Mothma has specifically chosen him for the job in the Albarrio Sector.

It’s been ten months since Jenoport, since Alfie, and Cassian’s work has been exemplary. He’s completed dozens of missions for Draven and the Alliance, without complaint, without saying much aside from what he writes in his concise and short reports. Draven has continued to give him new missions, and he’s gone off to whatever far-flung corner of the galaxy he’s been told to go to. Sometimes with K-2SO at his side, and sometimes not.

Cassian and K-2SO have a better understanding of each other nowadays. Better, at least, than they did before Jenoport.

They’re polite to one another, but guarded. Cassian frequently catches K-2SO staring at him, but whenever he demands to know why, K-2SO always comes up with some nonsense excuse.

Cassian almost thinks K-2SO is worried about him.

Like he used to worry. But that can’t be right.

Cassian’s work has been exemplary.

But it’s also been impersonal, and unflinching. He’s committed atrocities without batting an eye, without hesitating to offer up the gruesome details in his reports, writing like he’s speaking of someone else, describing himself and his own missions like he’s talking about a stranger.

He knows Mothma reads some of these reports, but not all of them. Draven usually finds a way to hide the darker, uglier reports from her. He thinks this is for the best, and Cassian agrees.

Mothma is an idealist. She still believes a diplomatic, political solution is possible to attain peace in the galaxy. That they can end this war through honest communication, sit-down discussions.

Cassian, and Draven, are soldiers. Lifelong soldiers, lifelong fighters. They know battle, and blood, is the only way to defeat the Empire. They’re committed to the Alliance, and the cause, and they’ll do whatever they have to, in order to keep it going, to keep it alive.

They aren’t anywhere close to winning, and are barely keeping up with the Empire.

But they’re doing _something_.

They’re going somewhere.

And Mon Mothma doesn’t need to know about the war in the shadows that has gotten them this far.

Still, she’s read some of Cassian’s reports, and has likely come to the conclusion that he might be in trouble.

Cassian suspects that Mothma worries the Alliance hasn’t done enough to keep him psychologically sane, grounded, and mentally healthy.

And Cassian can’t blame her.

Most days, he thinks her worry is justified.

So he accepts the assignment she gives him, and heads to the Albarrio Sector.

It’s close to Fest, and the Atrivis Sector, only about a quadrant away, and Cassian is pretty sure this is no coincidence, that Mothma might be encouraging him to visit his homeworld for a day or two.

It isn’t a thought Cassian is going to follow through.

He can’t stomach the thought of going back to Fest, of going _home_ , and remembering the child he used to be.

He tries to focus on the Albarrio Sector instead. But he thinks of how the Albarrio Sector is closer still to Garqi, the planet Cassian flew to on his first off-planet trip, with Wada, back when he was nine years old.

If Cassian closes his eyes, he can still remember Garqi, and its colors. Its warm air, its tall purple plants, its swift-moving blue rivers, the way the sun felt on his face, the way the light reflected off Wada’s black bug eyes--

Cassian pushes the memories, the ghosts, out of his mind.

He has work to do.

He settles on Scipio, a planet within the Albarrio Sector, the most populous and well-known. Scipio is very like Fest, in that it’s a cold, snow and ice-covered planet, with terrain consisting of cliffs and mountains. Cassian almost laughs when he sees it for the first time, as he guides the freighter into orbit, so familiar is the planet to a Festian.

Scipio is populated by a native species called the Muuns, tall, humanoid, with pink skin, three hearts, and elongated skulls. Muuns do not frequently travel off-planet, and prefer to stay indoors; they share these aspects of culture with many Festians, and Cassian wonders if Mothma knew this and factored that into her decision to send Cassian to recruit in the sector.

He’s been given the alias of Fulcrum, which he understands to be a code name used by a number of other Alliance agents. He knows the title has a long history, starting in the early days of the Empire, and now acts as a kind of calling card that promises help and stability to anyone who should approach the rebel agent with the moniker.

It is a little ironic then that _Cassian_ is the latest agent to use the storied title.

Luckily, Cassian has a colorful history of recruiting for the Alliance, and the Rebellion.

He tugs on Wada’s old blue parka, and gets to work.

He can still be charming and friendly, when he wants to be, and it doesn’t take much for Cassian to settle back into his old persona as recruiter. He also has something of a magnetic personality and aura, an ability to get people to trust and like him, even when he’s hardly done anything to merit their support. The Muuns and humans of Scipio recognize a kindred spirit in him, liking the way he doesn’t hesitate in walking through the deep snow that covers the planet, the way he can stay outside for hours without developing a chill.

The frost, and the cold, and the gray; it’s in Cassian’s blood. He will never shed it, not entirely.

K-2SO comes to visit Cassian after he’s been on Scipio for a month. He brings new intelligence from the Alliance, and a message from Shara and Kes.

“They’re worried about you,” K-2SO says, the bulbs in his eyes flashing, either in annoyance or emphasis, which tells Cassian that this message was probably both yelled and repeated. “Shara Bey says you have not talked to them for four months. She finds this behavior ‘unacceptable, and rude.’ Kes Dameron was not on base for this message, but Shara Bey insists he feels the same way.”

Cassian doesn’t doubt it.

“Got it, thanks,” he says, making space on the table in his small apartment for the boxes of information and star maps Draven has sent him, and ignoring K-2SO’s gaze.

He flicks through the reports, his attention caught when he spots Saw Gerrera’s name. He pauses, and reads the highlights of the report, detailing how Gerrera and the Partisans have established a permanent base on Jedha, due to the Empire strip-mining kyber crystals from the Holy City.

“Cassian.”

“Was there anything else?” Cassian sets the report on Gerrera aside, to read later, and moves on.

“ _Cassian_.”

“ _What?_ ” Cassian snaps, looking up from his organizing.

K-2SO stands there, looking entirely too tall for the apartment. He almost seems uncomfortable, or nervous, not unusual for him, but it still gives Cassian pause.

“What is it?”

K-2SO looks at him. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, Kay,” Cassian says.

“I find that answer unconvincing,” K-2SO says.

“It’s the truth.”

“Cassian,” K-2SO says. “I have not told anyone about Jenoport--”

“Good--”

“--But you have not been the same since,” K-2SO continues. “You are withdrawn. And rude. And I don’t like you like this.”

Cassian sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. He’s suddenly very tired.

“You don’t have to like me, Kay.”

By that he means, _I’m not sure I care if you like me or not_.

“But we were friends, Cassian.”

“We were.”

“You found me five years ago--”

“Yes, but…” Cassian trails off, because while it’s true that Cassian and K-2SO have known each other for five years, it is not a fact that K-2SO should know. He should’ve forgotten it, in the mind wipe he was given after he shot Cassian on Iego.

“Kay,” Cassian says, slowly. “How do you know that?”

It is K-2SO’s turn to look away, suddenly very interested in the way Cassian has his socks hanging over the central heater to dry.

“Kay, what did you do?”

And K-2SO cannot lie. Cassian included this in his original reprogramming, and the rebel technicians who wiped his memory and overhauled his programming undoubtedly did the same.

“There are personnel files on base,” K-2SO says. “And I… happened… to be near them one day…”

“You looked at… my file.”

Cassian wonders if he should feel like his privacy has been violated. He wonders if he should feel angry, or upset, with K-2SO for looking into information on Cassian that should be classified, and unavailable to anyone below his rank of Captain.

He mostly feels exhausted.

“What did you learn, Kay?” He asks.

K-2SO still refuses to meet Cassian’s eyes, but he also cannot disobey a direct order from Cassian.

“You found me on Coruscant five years ago,” he says, speaking monotonously, undoubtedly reciting the sight of Cassian’s file from his memory drive. “You reprogrammed me, and we worked for the Coruscant Rebellion. When I was not working for the Coruscant Rebellion, or at the headquarters, I lived with you. And another rebel named Taraja Ya’qul.”

Cassian’s breath catches, and he wraps his hands around the frame of the spindly wooden chair in front of the desk, keeping his eyes locked on the floor.

K-2SO has not said Taraja’s name in four years, not since they left Mantooine, when Cassian told him that he did not want to talk about her again.

“We left Coruscant four years ago,” K-2SO says. “Taraja Ya’qul was not with us. We went to Mantooine, but your file did not say why. And then we went to Fest, and we joined the Fest Rebellion. Well… _I_ joined. You _re-joined_. We were there for a year and a half, and then we went to Corellia.”

“Yes.”

“That’s it.”

Cassian looks up. “What?”

“That is as much as I read before I… had to go.”

From that, Cassian understands K-2SO heard someone coming, and abandoned Cassian’s file, rather than be caught reading it.

“Are you telling the truth, Kay?”

“Yes.”

K-2SO cannot lie.

Cassian nods.

“Okay.”

“Why was my memory wiped, Cassian?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” And here, K-2SO regains some spark, some frustration. It is more emotion than Cassian has seen from K-2SO lately.

“I’ve been ordered not to,” Cassian says.

Draven, and the technicians who reprogrammed K-2SO, felt it better that Cassian not remind K-2SO of the “incident,” as it was called. There was some worry that the reminder could re-spark whatever had come undone in K-2SO on Iego, or send him into some kind of catastrophic internal failure.

Mostly, Cassian does not want to have to tell K-2SO that he almost killed him.

Luckily, if there’s one thing K-2SO understands, it’s following orders.

Still, he manages to complain.

“I don’t like it.”

“I know,” Cassian says, gently. “But believe me, Kay. This is kinder.”

“For me?”

Cassian looks at him. “For both of us.”

“Can I ask another question?”

“Yes,” Cassian says, with a sigh.

“Who was Taraja Ya’qul?”

Cassian supposes he should not be surprised by the question. She was likely the only person mentioned by name in Cassian’s file that K-2SO read about and did not know, if he’d been looking for information related to his unknown history.

“She was my girlfriend,” Cassian says, voice now matching K-2SO’s in monotony, speaking like he’s reciting someone else’s history, speaking like he does in his reports. “We lived together on Coruscant. I found you, and then you lived with us too.”

“She’s dead?”

“Yes. She’s dead.”

_“S-She’s d-dead. She’s dead.”_

_“Yes. Taraja is dead. Breathe, Cassian.”_

Cassian looks away, dragging himself back from the Allanar freighter, when it was K-2SO who comforted him after he broke down upon finally understanding that Taraja was dead.

K-2SO is staring into space.

“I don’t remember her,” K-2SO says, and he sounds strangely sad at the realization.

“No. You wouldn’t.”

“What was she like?”

Cassian sighs, crossing his arms, and shaking his head. “Kay, I don’t--”

“You can’t tell me why my memory was wiped,” K-2SO says, cutting Cassian off, and the fire and frustration in his voice is real, and it gets Cassian staring. “I accept that. But Taraja Ya’qul died before my memory was wiped, and I can assume then that she had nothing to do with it, so you would not be disobeying orders in telling me about her.”

“I don’t understand why you want to _know_ ,” Cassian snaps, voice rising to match K-2SO’s. “She’s been dead for five years, she has nothing to do with us anymore--”

“I am trying to know _you_ , Cassian,” K-2SO says. “And I have very little information to go on. I need to start _somewhere_. Taraja Ya’qul is a place to start.”

And all the frustration drains out of Cassian.

He wonders when he forgot that K-2SO had loved Taraja, and she’d loved him back.

She’d found him confusing, and frustrating, and terrifying at first, but she’d warmed to him. It’d been Taraja who’d taken K-2SO to the Coruscant Rebellion, who’d defended him against the wary rebels. It’d been Taraja who had spent the most time with K-2SO on Coruscant, teaching him about the Rebellion, repairing blasters and rifles with him, taking him on missions around the planet.

Taraja had treated K-2SO like a person, had showed him how to cook Mantooian dishes, had complained to him about Cassian, and the Rebellion.

Cassian glances down, to Taraja’s old gray scarf, which he has wrapped around his neck right at this moment, and thinks of what she’d want to say.

The words come surprisingly easily.

“She loved you,” Cassian tells K-2SO now, his voice quiet. “You and her… You didn’t get along, not at all, at first. She thought you were rude, and dismissive. Nosy. Like a child. But she warmed to you, and you to her. She told me that you had an understanding; that you both loved me, and that was what you had in common. But I think you loved her. And she loved you, too.”

He wants K-2SO to understand that.

K-2SO listens, standing very still.

“Taraja gave me the idea,” Cassian says. “To find you. To find and reprogram a droid. We were… We were both sad, and a little lost. She thought we should get a pet.”

“I am not a _pet_ ,” K-2SO says.

Cassian smiles.

It is, after all, exactly what K-2SO had said at the time.

“I know,” Cassian says. “You were our friend.”

He pauses, and reconsiders his words.

“You are _still_ my friend, Kay.”

K-2SO turns his head, looking at Cassian more studiously.

“I’m sorry,” Cassian says. “I know I’ve… I haven’t been good. In a lot of ways, but. Especially to you. And you don’t deserve it, not at all.”

K-2SO shot Cassian on Iego. K-2SO almost killed Cassian on Iego. Cassian has assumed that he’d forgiven K-2SO for it, but he thinks now that maybe, a part of him had been furious with K-2SO. Shocked. Upset. Betrayed.

But he looks at K-2SO now, and he realizes that there isn’t anything to forgive, and that his anger is misplaced.

It hadn’t _been_ K-2SO, not at the time. Not his friend. Not the closest thing he has to family.

And this was also something that infuriated Cassian. Because the K-2SO he’d known and loved had died on Iego, like Cassian had died on Jabiim, when his heart stopped.

But Cassian was brought back to life.

Cassian thinks he’s been grieving K-2SO for over a year, since Iego, and this is why he’s been so dismissive of this new K-2SO.

He looks at K-2SO now, and he thinks that maybe the old K-2SO was also brought back to life, but changed.

Like Cassian has changed.

K-2SO is new now. Memory a little flawed. More graceful, more obedient.

But still rude. And opinionated.

Still endlessly loyal.

(Loyal to Cassian, above all else.)

(But neither of them have realized this yet.)

“I accept your apology, Cassian,” K-2SO says.

“Take a seat, Kay,” Cassian says. “I’m going to make tea, and then I’ll tell you everything that I can. Yeah?”

K-2SO nods. “Yes. Thank you, Cassian.”

“Of course,” Cassian says.

He hears K-2SO sink into the spindly wooden chair, while he walks to the kitchen.

* * *

After recruiting on Scipio for a month, Cassian moves to another planet in the Albarrio Sector, Mygeeto. Like Scipio (and Fest), Mygeeto is a frigid, ice-covered planet, with underground lakes, glaciers, mountains, and crystallized caves. The days are half as long as Cassian is used to, half the length of a standard day, and he often finds himself wandering out and about the major city of Jygat at all hours of the night, looking for something to do.

He finds an open cafe, tucked away in a corner of the city, away from the industrialization that dominates Jygat. Cassian peers in through a window, and sees a fire roaring, and a handful of patrons, and ducks inside.

It is the middle of the night, and all the patrons are Muuns, save for a woman in the corner, still bundled up tight in a parka and scarf, the fire not enough to keep her warm.

She looks up when Cassian walks in, the bell over the door announcing his arrival.

They make eye contact, and both still.

Cassian can’t stop the smile that spreads over his face, matching the woman’s.

It’s Asori Joshi.

He hasn’t seen her in five years, not since he left Coruscant with K-2SO and Taraja’s corpse.

He would never have guessed he’d see her on Mygeeto, of all places, now.

He walks to her table, and she gets to her feet, and they embrace, both laughing a little.

“What are the odds,” Cassian says, pressing his face to her dark hair, so glad to see her again.

“Not as astronomical as you might be thinking,” Asori says.

They pull back, looking at each other. Cassian is about four inches taller than Asori, but they can both remember a time when he was shorter than her.

“Hello, Asori,” Cassian says.

“Fulcrum,” Asori replies, and Cassian snorts.

“You knew I was in the area.”

“I heard it through the Mayla vine,” Asori says, nodding. “I was going to track you down in the morning.”

She sits back down, and Cassian takes the seat in front of her, nodding his thanks at the cafe worker who puts a cup of caf in front of him.

“Are you recruiting, too?”

Asori nods again. “The Academy’s always on the lookout for prime recruits. Luckily, I have some experience with Outer Rim teenagers, and know how to find the best ones.” She winks at Cassian. “Got a pretty good track record so far.”

“Pretty good,” Cassian repeats.

“You’ve had five very busy years since I last saw you, Cassian Andor.”

“You could say that.”

“I can’t believe you almost _died_ and didn’t even call me.”

“It wasn’t that close.”

“I read your medical file, Cassian,” Asori says, shaking her head. “Three blaster shots to the chest and coding twice in a medical center on kriffing _Jabiim_ is _very close_.”

“How did you get access to my file?”

Asori rolls her eyes. “I run the Coruscant Rebellion, Cassian. I am a very important person. Plus, I was your mentor.”

“And my friend,” Cassian says warmly.

“And your friend,” Asori agrees. She pauses, and considers him. “How old are you now? You’ve got quite the scruff going on.”

Cassian runs a hand over his cheek, brushing the beard growing there. “I’m twenty-five.”

“Well, that’s something,” she says. “We’ve known each other ten years.”

Cassian pauses, and realizes she’s right. Asori came to the Coruscant Rebellion ten years ago, and recruited fifteen-year-old Cassian for her wild plan to have someone infiltrate the Royal Imperial Academy as a cadet, and recruit for the Rebellion from within.

“Been a hell of a decade,” Cassian says.

“Mm. I’ll drink to that.”

They’re only drinking caf, but they both take a drink. Cassian looks around the cafe, catches the eyes of the Muuns, most of whom are eyeing Cassian and Asori with distrust, and a little curiosity. Humans are not common on Mygeeto, much less so than Scipio.

“How is Coruscant, Asori?” He asks, turning back to her.

“The same, more or less,” Asori says. “Empire is still running things, but we’ve made some dents, here and there. We have a long way to go, but… We’re headed somewhere.”

That’s a sentiment Cassian understands, and agrees with.

“If you want to know how someone, specifically, is, you’ll have to give me a name,” Asori says. “I don’t remember which rebels you knew.”

Cassian shakes his head. “No. It’s, uh… It’s fine.”

Asori blinks. “I know you had _some_ friends in the Rebellion, Cassian--”

“I don’t want to know if the ones I had are dead, Asori,” Cassian says sharply. “I don’t want to know. I’d like to think they’re still alive.”

Asori’s face turns somber.

“Ah. I understand.”

Cassian’s grateful that she does. He looks at the table, suddenly at a loss for what to say.

“I saw Ethan Bain, last year.”

Startled, Cassian jerks his head back up, looking at Asori with wide eyes. “What?”

Asori’s hazel eyes are serious, her face tight. “I was in his building on Coruscant. You remember he works in Advanced Weapons Research?”

Cassian nods. He’s never forgotten anything Ethan ever said to him, particularly the very last words he said to Cassian, the ones he spat and yelled, in fury and grief, on the streets of CoCo Town, Cassian bloody and beaten, pulled away by Taraja.

_“I’m done with your kriffing Rebellion! And I’m done with you, Cassian Andor, or Joreth Sward, or whoever the hell you are!”_

His chest aches with the pain of the memory.

“We were in the same meeting,” Asori says. “And he pulled me aside, afterward.”

Cassian frowns, wondering where this could be going.

“He told me that he’d been sorry to hear that Joreth Sward had died in the Galactic Opera House four years earlier.”

Whatever he’d expected Asori to say, it wasn’t that. Cassian reels, gripping his half-drunk cup of caf more tightly than necessary.

“What… What did you say?”

Asori shrugs. “I thanked him for his condolences. What else could I say?” She pauses, looking at Cassian carefully. “I did not even consider telling him that you’d survived. Should I have?”

“No,” Cassian murmurs.

He thinks Ethan would find more peace in believing Cassian Andor to be dead than knowing he was still out in the galaxy, killing people, upending and ruining lives.

He still feels deep regret whenever he thinks about Ethan, and Sebastian, and Callista and Damon. He knows he owes them so much, owes them everything for taking him in the way they did. He owes them so much more than even that too, for his murder of Sebastian.

“He was sorry to hear that you’d died,” Asori says, voice kind. “Maybe…”

“No. It’s better this way.”

He wants Ethan to have all the peace he can possibly get.

Asori studies Cassian’s face, taking in his haunted brown eyes, the stress lines that crease his forehead, the tense frown of his mouth. He imagines he looks impossibly older to her. He doesn’t think she’s changed all that much.

“How are you, Cassian?” She asks.

“I’m fine.”

“You certainly weren’t the last time I saw you.”

“No,” Cassian agrees.

He’d been heartbroken, grief-stricken, and lost, when he’d left Coruscant. He’d fled to Fest, to find himself again. And he had, in the ice, and in the snow, under the gray sky.

Cassian is still a little heartbroken, still almost perpetually grief-stricken, still frequently walks under clouds of gray.

But he isn’t lost anymore.

He knows exactly who he is.

A murderer. An assassin. A liar. A torturer. A thief. A spy.

Not good.

“I know who I am now,” Cassian says. “I’m exactly where I need to be.”

Asori only looks at him, and Cassian wonders if she understands.

Eventually, she sighs, and reaches out, taking one of Cassian’s hands in hers.

“It’s good to see you, Cassian,” she says.

He smiles, and squeezes her hand.

“It’s good to see you, Asori.”

They spend hours in the cafe, catching up. Cassian tells her about Shara and Kes, and his other Alliance friends. Asori tells him about some of her new recruits, the Alliance meetings she now occasionally attends, and about which teachers at the Academy have retired or left.

Kendet still teaches, but Gallamby is no longer at the Academy; he’s transferred back to active military duty, somewhere in the Outer Rim.

“I didn’t bother asking where, I don’t care,” Asori says, and the anger in her voice is fierce. Cassian knows she’s never thought well of Gallamby, but her opinion of him irrevocably darkened after Gallamby had Cassian shoot and kill the prisoners at Lemniscate.

It’s a long conversation, packed full of nostalgia and reminiscence.

Cassian has forgotten how much he’s missed her, how much he’d relied on her back on Coruscant, how much she’s taught him.

He’s grateful to see her again.

He had hoped that he would, but he thinks that part of him hadn’t truly believed it would happen.

When the sun is almost at its midpoint in the sky, Cassian and Asori leave the cafe. She has to catch a transport back to Coruscant, and he has a meeting with a prospective recruit.

“What do you think,” Asori muses, as they walk towards the Port, her arm wrapped around his. “Will we see each other again?”

(They won’t.)

Cassian looks at her, and shrugs. “Sure. I hope so.”

(Cassian Andor will die in one year. This is the last time Asori Joshi will ever see him.)

“Hope?”

“Keeps me going,” Cassian says, and he is not lying.

Hope is one of the very few things he allows himself to indulge in, to rely on.

“Spoken like a true rebel,” Asori agrees.

(Asori Joshi will be in her office at the Royal Imperial Academy on Coruscant when she receives the news of Cassian Andor’s death, along with news of the information he died to attain, the plans for the Empire’s greatest weapon, the Death Star, the very thing that killed him.)

(The Death Star is made out of the same material the desk she will be sitting at is made of, Quadanium metal.)

(Asori Joshi will take her blaster and destroy the desk.)

“Next time you come back from the dead, you call me, got it?”

“Of course,” Cassian says, and it’s a promise he will keep.

(Because Cassian Andor will not come back from the dead, not again.)

(Asori Joshi will resign from her post at the Royal Imperial Academy, and the Imperial Navy, the same day she learns of Cassian Andor’s death.)

(She will devote herself exclusively to leading the Coruscant Rebellion, a group Cassian Andor helped build, working tirelessly at her side.)

Asori hugs Cassian warmly, and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Don’t forget what I told you,” she tells Cassian. “About not forgetting the nice things. Don’t forget what keeps you going. Don’t forget what you fight for.”

(When asked why she has left the Empire, after working undercover in it for so long, Asori will say that the time had finally come; the Empire had asked too much of her.)

“I know,” Cassian says. “Take care of yourself, Asori. And thank you.”

They smile at each other one last time, and then Asori turns, walking into the Port.

Cassian turns away, and walks in the opposite direction, disappearing back into the city of Jygat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMAGO: a noun, meaning: 1) the final and fully developed adult stage of an insect, typically winged, and 2) an unconscious, idealized mental image of someone, especially a parent, that influences a person's behavior. There is more than one imago in this chapter.
> 
> It is canon that Cassian was a recruitment agent in the Albarrio Sector for the Alliance under the title of Fulcrum, though as always, there is no information on when this took place, so I have it here, 1 BBY. Fulcrum is canonically a title with a long history, and you can read more about it online if you'd like.
> 
> Albarrio Sector descriptions, including descriptions of Scipio and Mygeeto, drawn from Wookieepedia information.
> 
> The ROGUE ONE: REBEL DOSSIER does suggest that Mon Mothma worried about her rebel agents, and the terrible things they had to do, and that they were not being psychologically supported.


	40. Abendrot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-five years old when the Alliance to Restore the Republic is forced to abandon its base on Dantooine.

Cassian is twenty-five years old when the Alliance to Restore the Republic is forced to abandon its base on Dantooine.

He isn’t on Dantooine at the time, when the announcement is made, and the Alliance flees the planet. He’s on a reconnaissance mission on Saleucami, an arid desert planet in the Outer Rim, on the other side of the galaxy from Dantooine.

Cassian has a small team with him on Saleucami. There’s Melshi, the first rebel he met on Corellia, and who he knows quite well, and who’s also become a skilled combat soldier over the years. Their other team members are Taidu Sefla and Arro Basteren, two less experienced Alliance Intelligence soldiers, largely on this mission to learn from Cassian, who’s leading.

Saleucami is an old Separatist-controlled world, which has Cassian more relaxed than he’d normally be on a mission. Cassian knows how Separatists work, and think, even if they don’t technically exist anymore.

Saleucami is now a corporate planet, controlled by the Empire, with its major exports being medicines and technology, and though Cassian and his team are technically only there to record Imperial shipments on and off the planet, the Alliance won’t mind if they leave Saleucami with more supplies than they had upon arrival.

“Andor,” Melshi grunts, panting from below the main deck of the land transport he and Cassian are currently using as a stake out point, watching squadrons of stormtroopers passing through a hangar loaded with medical droids and other supplies. “Andor!”

“Hmm?” Cassian asks from the front of the transport, turning to look down towards Melshi.

“We’ve gotta get off this rock,” Melshi says, wiping sweat from his brow. Both he and Cassian have abandoned their Alliance jackets, and have their sleeves rolled up, trying to combat the heat creeping inside the stationary transport. “I’m sweating like a barve down here.”

Cassian laughs, turning away. “You’ll survive.”

“Maybe, but I’m not sure I’m happy about it.”

“We can give Lieutenant Sefla and Private Basteren another ten minutes.”

Melshi groans, issuing out a string of Corellian curses.

Cassian considers telling Melshi that if Cassian, someone who grew up on frigid Fest, can stomach the dry heat of Saleucami, then Melshi, who grew up on temperate Corellia, certainly can.

The aridness of Saleucami reminds Cassian more of Mantooine than anywhere else.

He half-glances to the side, where he’s left Taraja’s gray scarf on the transport’s driver’s seat.

His comlink crackles to life in his shirt pocket.

“Cassian? Are you there?”

He sighs, pulling the comlink out from his pocket. “Go ahead, Kay.”

“We’ve received a message from command,” K-2SO replies. He’s stationed back in the freighter the team took to Saleucami, guarding the boxes of medicines the team has already stolen.

“What is it?”

“Dantooine has been abandoned,” K-2SO replies, his voice coming in over the static, and Cassian freezes, breath stilling. “We are to meet up with the Alliance at the new base location, as soon as possible. The message claims that you know where this is.”

Melshi has stopped moving and cursing; he’s heard K-2SO’s message.

“Cassian? _Do_ you know where we are to go?” K-2SO asks.

“Yes, Kay,” Cassian snaps, voice harsher than he intended. He’s an officer, he’s been briefed on where to rendezvous with the Alliance should the Dantooine base be compromised. “Did the message say why they had to abandon the base?”

“No. Only that no one is to return to Dantooine. And that we are to go to the new base as soon as possible. Command’s orders.”

From that, Cassian understands Mon Mothma has issued an Alliance-network wide decree that everyone is to drop whatever they’re doing, and run.

Melshi climbs out from the lower deck. His face is pale beneath the sheen of sweat that coats his skin, his sparse blonde hair almost black with perspiration. He’s clearly alarmed.

“Captain Andor,” he murmurs, and his use of Cassian’s rank is almost more startling than this news of Dantooine. Cassian and Melshi have known each other for years, might even be called friends, and are rarely so formal with one another, frequently referring to the other by surname only.

“Orders?” Melshi asks.

Cassian looks at him. “Let’s go, Sergeant.”

Melshi nods, and moves quickly, jumping into the driver’s seat and starting up the land transport’s engine. Taraja’s gray scarf slides to the floor, and Cassian can only spare it a glance before returning to the comlink.

“Lieutenant Sefla?” He calls.

“Yeah, I’m here, sir,” Sefla replies, and his voice is shaky; he’s also heard K-2SO’s message.

“Is Private Basteren with you?”

“Right here, sir,” Sefla confirms.

“Stop whatever you’re doing,” Cassian says. “And go back to the ship. Sergeant Melshi and I will meet you there. You’re closer to it than we are, you’ll beat us back. Understood?”

“Yes, Captain Andor.”

“Good, go,” Cassian says. He pockets the comlink, and slides into the passenger’s seat. Melshi looks at him, and Cassian jerks his head towards the open desert before them.

Melshi sends them speeding out over the sand.

Cassian reaches down to the floor and scoops up Taraja’s gray scarf, winding it around his head.

Melshi glances at him from the corner of his eye. “That scarf has seen better days, huh?”

“It has,” Cassian agrees, knowing Melshi is speaking of the scarf’s murky gray color, its ratty fringe, and numerous stains.

(Cassian only has to think of Taraja wearing it on Coruscant to agree that the scarf has seen better days.)

“Why are you wearing a scarf in a desert, Andor?”

“Not to keep myself warm.”

Melshi nods, looking at him with some confusion, but doesn’t ask anything more.

They spend the rest of the ten minute drive in silence.

Cassian spends the time thinking, considering what might have caused the Alliance to abandon the base on Dantooine so suddenly, and why senior leaders would’ve felt the need to recall rebels around the galaxy, to meet up at the new base.

The only logical conclusion he can come up with is that the Empire somehow learned of the base’s existence. Perhaps the Empire even managed to steal records and documents from the Alliance, including rebel movements, which could explain why Cassian and his team are being recalled from Saleucami.

Cassian swallows, and rubs a hand over his eyes.

The sun is blinding.

Melshi stops the land transport near the Class 720 freighter the team has flown to Saleucami in. The freighter is bigger than Cassian is used to flying, almost 40 meters long, with two escape pods and a double laser cannon. The cargo capacity is large, and at the moment, quite close to full, with K-2SO shuffling around the loading bay, moving aside boxes for Sefla and Basteren to load crates of bacta from their own land transport. A wind storm has started up, blowing sand in all directions.

Cassian grabs his abandoned jacket, wraps the gray scarf around his face, and leaves the land transport, running across the sand towards the freighter, Melshi at his heels.

“I thought I told you to stop what you were doing, and go to the ship,” Cassian says as soon as he’s inside the loading bay of the freighter, unwinding Taraja’s scarf from his head, letting it hang around his neck.

Melshi comes sputtering in behind him, spitting sand from his mouth, and shaking his hair, now messy with sand grains caught in it. “Yeah, got it. Scarf. Good idea, Captain.”

“We already had this,” Sefla says, gesturing to the crates. “And you weren’t here yet, so we thought we’d load what we could while we waited.”

It was a good idea, and Cassian nods.

“We’re here now, and we’re taking off,” he says. “Get buckled in. Kay, are we set?”

“Yes, Cassian.”

“Let’s go,” Cassian says, and K-2SO follows him to the cockpit, their passengers running to the cabin behind them.

“Where are we going?” K-2SO asks, settling into the co-pilot’s seat and initiating the take off sequence.

“Yavin 4,” Cassian says, tugging on his headset. K-2SO nods, and begins putting in coordinates.

They take off minutes after that.

Saleucami is a blur of yellow sand below them, and it vanishes when Cassian punches the hyperdrive, sending them speeding past the stars.

* * *

Yavin 4 is a habitable moon in the Gordian Reach sector, orbiting the gas planet Yavin. It is fairly remote, covered in jungles and rainforests, with a warm and near tropical climate. It has two seasons: a dry season, and a wet one, with extreme rainstorms. The moon is stunningly lush, enormously so even from space, and Cassian can’t help but stare at the tall trees, thick undergrowth, and dizzying architectural structures as he lands the ship at the Great Temple of Massassi, the ancient site the Alliance will now be appropriating for its headquarters.

“It’s very… green,” K-2SO says, and if this is the worst he can come up with to complain about Yavin 4, then Yavin 4 may very well be the greatest place in the galaxy.

Cassian climbs down to the cargo bay, where Melshi, Sefla, and Basteren are already up and waiting.

“I’m going to check us in,” Cassian says. “Don’t start unloading until you’ve found the acting head medic, or whoever is going to be in charge of medical supplies.”

“Yes, sir,” the three soldiers chime back.

“Yavin 4 is colder than Saleucami, at least for the moment, so prepare yourself before heading outside,” Cassian says, pulling his Alliance jacket, his old tan Corellian-cut field jacket, on. “It’s breathable though, so don’t worry about contaminants.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldiers say.

Cassian looks back at K-2SO. “Stay with them. Make yourself useful.”

“Don’t I always?”

Melshi snorts, while Cassian rolls his eyes.

He wraps Taraja’s scarf around his neck for warmth, and then walks off the ship, stepping on the ground of Yavin 4.

It’s chilly, the air much colder than Cassian had experienced in the past few weeks on Saleucami, and he walks quickly. The Temple is swamped with rebels, soldiers and officers alike, along with droids, ships, boxes of weapons, and other supplies. It is complete chaos, all shouting and yelling, ships landing and being shuttled away, which means it is undoubtedly the Alliance moving in.

Command rooms are still being set up, and so it takes Cassian ten minutes to finally locate Draven.

The General nods when he sees him.

“Good, you made it,” he says, turning to the datapad in his hands.

“Yes, sir,” Cassian says. “With Sergeant Melshi, Lieutenant Sefla, Private Basteren, and K-2SO.”

“Anything from Saleucami?”

“I have a report, but nothing unusual,” Cassian says. “We’ve brought back medical supplies.”

“Good.”

“General,” Cassian says. “What happened to Dantooine?”

“We found an Imperial listening device,” Draven says, eyes locked on the datapad in his hands, speaking plainly. “We decided to abandon the base immediately; the risk was too great.”

Cassian nods, his insides twisting. “Will we be able to return to Dantooine?”

Draven shoots him a look. “No. Imperial scouts will certainly be waiting for any strays who miss the recall alert. They’ve likely ransacked the entire base by now.”

“Understood,” Cassian says, voice soft.

Draven frowns at him. “What is it, Captain Andor?”

“Nothing,” Cassian says quickly. “Just, uh… Wondering.”

“Hmm,” Draven says, looking like he definitely does not believe Cassian, but choosing not to inquire further. “File your report, Captain Andor, and then see what you can do for air traffic control. They’re absolutely swarmed, obviously.”

“Understood,” Cassian says again, nodding and walking away.

He walks out of the room, and down the hall, before spotting an empty alcove and ducking inside, leaning against the wall, turning his eyes to the rocky ceiling.

Almost all of his things are still on Dantooine. His clothes, his shoes, the weapons he’s acquired over the years, and the few personal items he’s also accumulated.

Like the Rodian pistol Wada gave him for his thirteenth birthday. And the hologram of Wada and Cassian on Fest. And the hologram of teenage Serafima. And the old blue scarf of Nerezza’s. And Gabriel’s dagger. And the fragmented piece of Serafima’s pottery.

All on Dantooine.

All out of Cassian’s reach.

All likely destroyed, or taken by the Empire.

He does have Wada’s blue parka, back in the ship; he very rarely leaves a planet without it, preferring to keep it with him, just in case he needs it. And he has his tan Corellian-cut field jacket, lullaby pill tucked inside.

And Taraja’s gray scarf, wrapped around his neck.

He lifts his hand to the thin fabric, running it over his palm, staring at it.

“Cassian, hey.”

He turns, and spots Kes, looking a little winded and sweaty.

“You busy?” Kes asks. “Because I’ve got a ship full of guns, and a Major breathing down my neck, trying to get me to move the damn ship, but I can’t because it’s full of _guns_ that need to be unloaded--”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Cassian says quickly, stepping back from the wall.

He follows Kes back outside.

* * *

The Alliance fully settles in to Yavin 4 a couple months later.

Unlike Dantooine, the Temple was already there and stable, and so they don’t have to build facilities and hangars from the ground up this time. There is also a stronger sense of safety on Yavin 4, because it isn’t on many Imperial star maps, due to its remoteness and general lack of people.

But the jungle is loud, especially at night, when the nocturnal creatures come out.

“Do you think it’s spooky?” Kes asks.

He and Cassian are sitting in the quarters Kes shares with Shara. It’s cramped, but there’s space for a bed, a dresser, a closet, and a table with a few chairs, the number depending on the amount of people in the room. It’s just Kes and Cassian at the moment; Shara had been there earlier but had departed, muttering about how she’d left something in her x-wing.

“What? Yavin 4?” Cassian asks, studying his sabacc cards.

“There are _no_ people here.”

“The Alliance is here, Kes.”

“Yeah but there wasn’t anyone here before us,” Kes says. “It’s a little strange.”

Cassian understands what he means. Fest is densely populated; people clump together, to be close to the shelters, and supplies, and warmth. And Coruscant was even more densely populated, the most populous planet in the galaxy, just one giant city. And Corellia was also quite populated, and developed. Even Dantooine had the Dantari.

Yavin 4 is something else entirely.

“I like the quiet,” Cassian says.

“Yeah,” Kes says, and he sounds a little strange, a little thoughtful. “I think I do too, Cass.”

Cassian opens his mouth to ask, but is interrupted by the door opening, and Shara returning, carrying a heavy box in her arms.

“Out, Kes,” she demands.

“I live here,” Kes replies, his voice a question, like he’s suddenly uncertain of this fact.

Shara heaves the box onto the table, knocking most of the cards off. Cassian catches his glass of cider before it can hit the floor.

“What is this, Shara?” He asks.

“I was on Sernpidal last week,” Shara says. “And I came across something that I thought you might like, since you’ve been curious about Sernpidal in the past.”

Bewildered, Cassian stands up and looks into the box. He stills.

It’s a potter’s wheel.

A small one, much smaller than the one Serafima had in her house on Fest, but undoubtedly a potter’s wheel. It’s made of smooth wood, with a gray stone wheel, and a pedal to get it moving.

Kes smiles a little when he sees it. “Ah. Sernpidalians only, I see.”

He presses a kiss to Shara’s cheek, and squeezes Cassian’s shoulder, before leaving the room.

“Sit, Cass,” Shara says.

Cassian sits, at a loss for words. Shara tugs the potter’s wheel from the box, setting it on the ground in front of Cassian, and turns Kes’ abandoned chair, so they’re facing each other. She reaches back inside the box and procures a bag of thick, gray clay.

“Pottery is both an art and a pastime on Sernpidal,” she says, voice soft. “Basically everyone learns how to make a simple pot, or cup, or vase, while in school. Some Sernpidalians are much more talented than others. I’m not one of them. I never had the patience for pottery making; I would much rather be flying than sitting in a stuffy art studio for hours on end.”

Cassian smiles a little, as Shara pulls fistfuls of clay from the bag, offering it to Cassian. He reaches inside, his hands sliding through the gray clay, running it through his fingers.

“But, I was on Sernpidal last week, and I thought of you,” Shara continues. “And I know you lost that hologram of your mother on Dantooine. And I know you’re upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Cassian.”

He sighs. “Shara, you don’t have to--”

“I know I don’t _have_ to,” Shara says. “I wanted to. This is as much for you as it is for me, okay? I miss my home. Pottery reminds me of Sernpidal. So we’re both going to make some truly dreadful pieces, and then never speak of this again.”

Cassian laughs. “All right. But you’re going to have to teach me. I don’t know anything.”

Serafima had offered to teach her children how to make pottery, but they’d all declined. They’d never found the process as interesting as Serafima did, and the coldness of her studio also worked as a deterrent. Cassian can barely remember what any of the pieces she’d made had looked like, or the brilliance of the colors she’d created.

He only remembers the fragility of them all.

He pays attention, as Shara teaches him, guiding his hands around the gray clay.

He is no longer a child on Fest, with smooth hands that only held his siblings’ hands or his mother’s hand. He is now an adult, now twenty-five years old, with hands marked with callouses, frequently coated in gray ash, frequently stained red with blood that is not his own.

He thinks about this, as he uses his hands to shape a delicate vase.

He remembers being nine years old, and standing with his mother in her studio, and looking at their hands under the hot water, and thinking he’d inherited Serafima’s hands.

Cassian suddenly understands that he was right, more or less. He has her long fingers, and her dexterity, can use the wheel’s movements to his advantage. But he also has used his hands to steal, and fight, like Serafima did, as a teenager on Sernpidal.

Cassian’s parents died while he was a child, before he could discover his identity.

He realizes now that he is his mother’s son, for better or worse.

He blinks, and hears her voice in his head.

_“I would remind you that you do not have to do this. I would tell you that you can back out at any time. But something tells me that you will never want to abandon this cause. Stubbornness runs in this family, but loyalty does too. And you are my son, Cassian.”_

Cassian hadn’t understood what she was saying at the time. He’d just been relieved that she wasn’t going to tell him to abandon the Fest Rebellion.

He’d just been relieved that she would still love him, even though they disagreed about the Empire and the Rebellion.

He realizes now that she’d been _warning_ him. That she’d had a suspicion, a premonition, of the kind of man he was going to become if he continued his path in the war.

_“Before my politics, before my opinions, you are my son. Will I still be your mother, before your politics, before your opinions, before your cause?”_

Cassian had said yes, of course, but he realizes now that he’s spent years holding her Imperial allegiance against her, not talking about her as much as he’s spoken of his father, because Gabriel is easier to discuss with rebels, because Gabriel had been one of them, and had required no further description or thought.

But Serafima was an enigma, a question mark; she’d always been one to Cassian, even when he was a child.

Like Gabriel was, except Cassian hadn’t realized at the time that he didn’t know Serafima. Not well.

Cassian has always assumed he is more his father’s son, because they fought for the same cause.

But he realizes now that he is truly Serafima Cassiano’s son, named after her. Like her, he has tried to bury his past in the back of his mind. Like her, he avoids discussing the details of it, gives only bare sketches to people he encounters who ask for it. Like her, he treats his past as a distant, unknowable thing, to be avoided at all costs.

He wonders if his mother’s past is littered with the kinds of heinous acts that Cassian’s own past includes.

_“I see your seriousness, Cassi. I do not understand it. I do not agree with it. But I see your earnestness, and that you do believe what you are doing. And that is what I want for you, more than anything. For you to have belief in something more than yourself. Something bigger.”_

He wonders if she’d stand by her words, if she could see him now.

He wonders if she’d forgive him, for all he’s done, for the cruel, terrible man he’s become.

“Shara,” Cassian murmurs, and his voice is soft.

Shara looks at him, tearing her eyes away from the vase Cassian has been sculpting. She has a bit of gray clay caught on her forehead, and her hands match his, sticky with the gray clay, and she has that black curly hair Serafima did too.

“Hmm?” She asks.

Cassian smiles. “Thank you.”

Shara nods. “It’s calming, no? You can totally just zone out, and detach yourself from everything. Just… let go.”

“Let go,” Cassian repeats.

“Sometimes it helps us feel better.”

“Yeah,” Cassian says.

He looks down, at his gray hands.

* * *

The Alliance is short on some supplies more than others. For example, they are well-stocked in ships and guns, thanks to Garm Bel Iblis and Bail Organa. They also have more rebel soldiers than ever before, thanks to Mon Mothma’s recruiting efforts, along with the efforts of a handful of recruitment agents.

But they lack the simple things. Rations. Novelties.

Clothes.

Cassian has spent the last few months since Dantooine acquiring clothes while on his various missions. He doesn’t need much, has never needed much, and isn’t picky with what he ends up with. He buys in bulk where he can, bringing clothes back to base with him, mostly following the Alliance’s new look of tans and browns, the kinds of colors that help them blend in with the forests and jungles around Yavin 4, and the rock of the Temple, the kinds of colors that contrast nicely with the Empire’s blacks, whites, and grays.

They have a room on base filled with an assortment of clothes, all up for grabs for the rebels that need them. These include thick coats and jackets for colder planets, hiking boots for rocky ones, and raincoats for storm planets.

Some have been bought by the Alliance, but the majority of the clothes have been donated by sympathizing citizens and systems.

People who can’t actually fight, but who still want to help, in whatever way they can.

Cassian has been thinking about this simple concept a lot.

He’s also been thinking about what Shara said, about letting go, letting things fall where they may.

He’s also been thinking about Serafima, and how she never spoke of her past, how she left it all behind her.

How she never had any physical reminders of her past around her home.

How this lack of reminders kept her in the present, kept her doing her work, kept her with her children.

Cassian thinks of how he left all of his and Taraja’s apartment things with the Coruscant Rebellion, their dishes and blankets and pillows and whatnot, because he knew there were rebels who’d need them more than Cassian’s nostalgia did.

He thinks of how he’s given up everything he has, everything he is, for the sake of this cause, the Rebellion, and the Alliance, and that he might as well give up this last, happy memory, because someone might need its usefulness more.

It is with this thought in mind that he takes Taraja’s old gray scarf into the spare clothes room.

It might be ratty, and stained, and very second-hand, but it’s still a scarf. It’ll keep someone else warm.

Or, at the very least, it will be so ugly and damaged that no one will want it, and so Cassian will never have to see it again.

He’s okay with that.

He needs to let go.

He needs to give Taraja up, if he is to devote himself entirely to the cause now.

The loss of Taraja is still painful, still raw. Cassian has accepted Wada’s old blue parka as his own, has more memories of himself wearing it than of Wada wearing it, and considers the parka essential to his missions on cold planets. But the scarf isn’t entirely necessary.

There are other scarves, and if he decides he needs one, he’ll come back to this room and borrow one.

Just not Taraja’s scarf.

He can’t look at it without thinking of Taraja, and becoming distracted by that old ache in his chest.

Cassian carefully hangs the gray scarf on a rack with a handful of others. The other scarves are newer, cleaner, and still in relatively good condition. Taraja’s old gray scarf sticks out, and he can’t imagine anyone looking at the scarves and choosing this one, this sad scrap of material with the tragic history.

(Someone will.)

He gives the scarf one last appraisal. It does still almost look purple, in a certain light, and Cassian is visited by that fleeting feeling of hope, that feeling he connected to Taraja for so long, that feeling that’s all but lost to him now.

(Someone will wear this scarf, and save Cassian’s life, and that feeling of hope will begin to return to him.)

(But he doesn’t know that yet.)

Cassian turns away, and walks out of the room.

* * *

Cassian is stopped in the hall at headquarters one day, after he’s recently returned from an assassination mission on Mandalore, by Mon Mothma herself.

She looks exhausted, gray bags under her soft eyes, and her hands are a little shaky with fatigue.

They look like each other, possibly for the first time.

“Hello, Captain Andor,” she says warmly in her sharply accented Basic, a little bit of sparkle returning to her face.

Cassian inclines his head in respect. “Ma’am.”

“How are you liking Yavin 4?”

“It’s very nice, ma’am,” Cassian says, and it’s the truth.

“Hm,” Mothma hums, looking at Cassian thoughtfully. “You’re from Fest, is that correct?”

Confused at this turn in conversation, Cassian nods. “Yes, I am.”

“Did you like it there?”

“Um, mostly, ma’am,” Cassian says, and this is the truth, more or less.

“The cold wasn’t too much? The snow?”

“We survive it,” Cassian says. “It’s all that many of us ever know.”

“What about non-Festians? How do they fare?”

Cassian shrugs. “They adapt. Those who can’t, leave. But it’s possible to adapt, and stay, and learn to live with the cold.”

He thinks of Serafima, who never truly liked Fest, but adapted to the cold winds and gray snow until it seemed like Fest itself respected her.

“I see,” Mothma murmurs, eyes thoughtful.

“If I may, what is this about, ma’am?”

Mon Mothma does not make it a habit of asking her soldiers about their homeworlds.

“Considering future bases,” Mothma says. “Not on Fest, of course, the Empire’s perfectly aware of a smaller Rebellion group there. But perhaps a planet with… a similar climate. We have to be ready should we need to abandon Yavin 4 like we did Dantooine.”

“Of course,” Cassian says.

It makes sense, he knows. The Empire could learn about Yavin 4 at any time, and the Alliance would need to evacuate to a new location soon after. Yavin 4 had been chosen as the next base shortly after the Alliance had settled on Dantooine, though he knows no one expected they’d have to go to it so soon.

He imagines the Alliance on Fest, imagines Shara flying her x-wing over the ice-covered mountains, imagines Melshi swearing up a storm while trying to walk through hip-high snow, imagines Kes going nowhere without the biggest parka he could find.

It makes him smile.

Mothma pats his arm. “Thank you for your input, Captain Andor.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

She walks away, still looking thoughtful.

* * *

Cassian doesn’t exactly have a lot of spare time while on base, but every now and then he finds an hour or two, usually later in the day, where he is not needed.

He uses this time to explore the land around the Temple, wandering into the jungle and rainforest. The rainy season is about to kick off, and so he always takes a rain jacket with him, pulling the hood over his head, looking up at storming gray clouds, feeling the occasional drop of rain hit his skin.

There are a handful of other temples besides the Great Temple on Yavin 4, and Cassian spends these lost hours exploring them.

He climbs.

It is something he’s done his whole life. He remembers being a child on Fest, and climbing around the snow and ice-covered mountains, following the sound of Nerezza’s voice as she cheered him on, Zeferino lagging behind him, ready to catch him should he fall. He remembers being a teenager on Coruscant, and navigating the Underworld, sliding through narrow exhaust tunnels and running through drainage pipes, Wada swearing behind him at the grime. He remembers climbing ladders and over rooftops with Taraja, running after her, her voice calling back to him, challenging him to be quicker than her.

He hardly ever was.

But Cassian likes climbing, and is good at it.

K-2SO finds him like this, perched on a ledge a good fifty meters above the ground, watching the sun setting over the rainforest, gray storm clouds rolling in from the opposite direction. The scene makes for half of the sky looking like a blur of bloody reds and sharp yellows, while the other is swathed in dark uncertainty.

“Cassian? What are you doing?”

“Sitting,” Cassian calls, glancing down over the ledge, spotting K-2SO staring up at him.

“Why up there?”

Cassian smiles. “You’re just upset you can’t get yourself up here.”

K-2SO huffs, but Cassian knows he’s right.

“I’ve been told to find you,” K-2SO calls. “Kes Dameron says it’s almost time.”

“Mm,” Cassian murmurs.

He stares out over the tops of the rainforest for a minute more, the gray clouds coming ever closer, the storm literally on the horizon.

The sunset, on the other side, is beautiful.

But he can hear K-2SO shifting around below, an ever-present reminder of his presence, and so Cassian sighs, and climbs back down.

He scrubs the dirt from his hands when he lands back on the rainforest floor. “Do you know what we’re celebrating, Kay?”

“Yes. The beginning of a new year.”

(In a few hours, it will be 3277 LY, according to the Lothal Calendar.)

“That’s right, Kay,” Cassian says, beginning the walk back to the Great Temple.

Cassian is twenty-five years old.

“Do you have any New Year’s expectations?” Cassian asks. “Any wishes?”

“I wish that we do not have to go anywhere too cold. Or too hot.”

(They will.)

“I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one,” Cassian says.

“I don’t have breath to hold--”

“Yes, yes,” Cassian says quickly, shaking his head.

“What about you, Cassian? Do you have any… New Year’s wishes?”

Cassian will turn twenty-six years old in a few months.

He considers K-2SO’s query, walking around a fallen tree, as a soft rain begins to fall.

(The year of 3277 will go down in Galactic History as the year the Galactic Civil War officially begins.)

(It is the year Emperor Palpatine formally dissolves the Galactic Senate.)

(It is the year the jedi make a big return, after being gone for so long.)

(It is the year the Empire unveils its greatest weapon, the Death Star.)

(It is the year the Death Star obliterates Alderaan.)

(It is the year the Alliance destroys the Death Star.)

“No,” Cassian says, responding to K-2SO’s question. “I don’t have any wishes, or expectations.”

(It is the year Cassian Andor dies.)

(In about six months’ time.)

(But he doesn’t know that.)

Cassian turns and looks at K-2SO now, walking behind him so faithfully, like he always has.

“I would like to see a few more sunsets,” Cassian says. “Maybe walk on a beach, finally. Can you believe I’ve never walked on a kriffing beach?”

K-2SO blinks, being unaware of this omission in Cassian’s life, and not understanding why Cassian would like to walk on a beach.

The two of them continue through the rainforest, walking back to Alliance headquarters, the sun setting behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ABENDROT is a German word, translated in a few places as a description of the colors of the sky at sunset. We are now entering the sunset, the last year, of Cassian Andor’s life.
> 
> Basteren and Sefla will both become members of the Rogue One squad on Scarif.
> 
> The Alliance abandoning the base on Dantooine due to an Imperial listening device was the Old EU reason, too. There was a story about the listening device being planted there by Boba Fett, after the Alliance captured Darth Vader, but this transformative work is ignoring that Darth Vader storyline because this Author is not a fan of it.
> 
> Kes Dameron and Shara Bey do eventually settle on Yavin 4, and this is where Poe Dameron is raised.
> 
> Mon Mothma asking Cassian about life on Fest is to suggest that Cassian’s input was influential in the Alliance’s decision to establish a base on Hoth, though there is no canon suggestion of this; it’s just something I wanted to do. Cassian did not live to see this new base.
> 
> Pottery as a pastime on Sernpidal was made up by me.
> 
> STAR WARS, and ROGUE ONE, are so heavy on the stories about fathers, and so I wanted to argue that Cassian Andor was actually more like his mother. There is no canon information about her, so why not. (This also plays into Cassian being so like Zeferino, who was someone he fundamentally disagreed with, but related very much to, for better or worse.)
> 
> Bonus points if you guessed where Taraja’s gray scarf was going to end up before reading this chapter. I have watched ROGUE ONE several times now, and noticed that Jyn is picked up from Wobani with only the clothes on her back; she scores that jacket and scarf on Yavin 4. And because I’m me, I thought, What if that scarf has a long, tragic story? What if it helps explain why Cassian behaves so oddly around Jyn, at least initially?
> 
> This is the last pre-ROGUE ONE chapter. The rest of this story will deal with the events of the film.


	41. The Beginning of The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-six years old, and in pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes direct quotes from ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

Cassian is twenty-six years old, and in pain.

He’s currently lying on the floor of a stockroom in the shipyards of the planet Corulag.

Located in the Core Worlds region, Corulag is an industrialized planet that is mostly just an urban sprawl, with a handful of natural plains. Its biggest exports are raw materials, including metals essential to the manufacturing of starships, and, with the Empire’s grip on its factories and resources tightening, has been exporting more metals bound for Imperial Star Destroyer factories than for any other kind of ship factories in the last six months. This makes the shipyards of Corulag a prime target for the Alliance.

Cassian went to the shipyards to assassinate the man heading up the mining and exporting of these raw materials, an Imperial officer called Ric Wyvern.

Unfortunately for Cassian, Wyvern had once been an accomplished soldier in the Republic Navy, and thus had an extensive background in combat.

Meaning this was no simple assassination, but rather a backroom brawl that has ended with Wyvern dead on the floor, two blaster holes in his chest, and Cassian sprawled several feet away on the floor and unable to get up, due to the blaster shot Wyvern had managed to land in his left hip.

He thinks it’s clipped the bone, though he’s pretty sure it hasn’t been broken.

Wyvern had also managed to break, or at least crack, a good four or five of Cassian’s ribs, and his chest aches, and he doesn’t move for fear of accidentally puncturing a lung. His abdomen aches too, and he knows at least one of Wyvern’s punches has likely caused internal bleeding.

He can also taste blood in his mouth, bubbling around his throat.

Cassian fights to keep his breathing even, forcing himself to let go of his blaster. With one hand plastered to his side, trying to keep his ribs in check, he uses his free one to reach into his jacket pocket, finding his comlink.

“Kay?” He calls, voice strained, slurring around the blood in his throat. “Kay.”

“Cassian? Where are you?”

“Warehouse 4A,” Cassian grunts, grimacing as even the reverberation of his voice causes his chest to hurt more. “The stockroom… 32. Kay. I need you to come get me. I can’t move.”

“Why?”

K-2SO sounds almost comically suspicious, like he thinks Cassian might be pulling some kind of prank on him, and the nonsensicality of such an act almost makes Cassian laugh. But laughing would only cause him more pain, so he swallows a mouthful of blood instead.

“I can’t _move_ ,” he groans, putting as much force into his words as he can. “You have to help me out of here, and we have to go to the nearest medical center, before I pass out, or worse.”

If he is bleeding internally, he needs medical intervention as soon as possible.

K-2SO is quiet for a moment, and Cassian sighs.

“ _Kay_. Warehouse 4A. Stockroom 32.”

“I’m on my way, Cassian,” K-2SO says, and then the comlink clicks off.

Cassian leans his head back against the floor, blinking up at the gray ceiling. There’s a prominent skylight just above him, and he stares up at the dark night sky, lit with flashing stars and the lights of speeding ships. It’s so quiet, and the tranquility reminds him of his trips to the Port of Fulcra when he was a child, when he’d sit and loiter and watch the ships from deep space come in.

He desperately clings to that warm memory, as his body aches and bleeds.

His hip is starting to hurt more as the minutes pass, as the adrenaline of fighting for his life fades away. He turns his head and spots Wyvern, light blue eyes wide open and staring, bloodied body and face turning pale against the dark floor.

_Kay’s on his way_ , Cassian thinks. _Stay awake. Do not pass out. Do not pass out_.

It’s late at night, and the warehouse is empty, the workers gone home. Cassian is relieved that neither he nor K-2SO have to worry about running into Imperial workers, although they do have to worry about setting off security. He hopes K-2SO is aware of that, was listening when Cassian had mentioned the alarms he’d have to bypass to get into the warehouse to confront Wyvern.

Cassian is startled when blood from the blaster wound in his hip brushes up against his torn shirt sleeve, staining his bare arm.

Maybe he won’t have to worry about dying from the internal bleeding. Maybe he’ll just bleed out first.

_Keep your eyes open_ , Cassian thinks, blinking slowly. _Do not pass out, do not pass out_ …

He’s so tired.

He focuses, and tries to find pride in killing Wyvern, in at least temporarily halting the Empire’s development of its next line of Star Destroyers. It isn’t much, but it’s something.

_Stop_ , Cassian thinks. _You are not going to die on this floor. Stay awake. Do not pass out. Kay is--_

“Cassian?”

Cassian opens his eyes, not having realized he’d closed them.

“Kay?”

A moment later, K-2SO appears above him, staring down at Cassian. The droid’s head turns, the bulbs in his eyes flickering, taking him in.

Cassian suddenly becomes aware of the sound of a siren, and realizes K-2SO has managed to set off an alarm.

“Cassian, you are very hurt.”

“I figured that out for myself,” Cassian mutters. “Help me up.”

K-2SO reaches down, wrapping an arm around Cassian’s waist, pulling him upright. Cassian hisses with the movement, and feels blood dribble from the side of his mouth. He tries to put weight on his left leg and is visited by a flash of white hot pain, and collapses back against K-2SO.

“Cassian--”

“Give me a minute,” Cassian breathes. He pauses, leaning against K-2SO, pressing his left side against the droid’s right side. K-2SO is much taller than him, and has to crouch a bit to keep one arm anchored around Cassian’s waist, carefully skirting the blood seeping from the shot in his hip.

“This would be easier if I _carried_ you,” K-2SO says.

Cassian snorts, then groans as the movement jars his ribs. “Not a chance. Let’s go. Just… slowly.”

K-2SO does end up carrying Cassian, more or less. He bears the brunt of Cassian’s weight, letting Cassian hobble along next to him out of the stockroom, as the two of them shuffle through the dark warehouse, piles of steel on conveyor belts all around them.

“Talk to me, Kay,” Cassian grunts, sweat beading across his forehead, blood still spilling from his hip.

“About what, Cassian?”

“Anything. Just… give me something to think about.”

“Your left hip has taken blaster fire,” K-2SO says. “I do not think it’s been broken, but it’s likely been bruised, maybe burnt. The wound has been exposed to a dirty stockroom floor and air for about ten minutes, which leaves a 68 percent chance of infection, along with a current 13 percent chance of permanent nerve damage that is only increasing as time passes. You’ve been coughing up blood, and cradling your abdomen, both symptoms of internal bleeding, and your chances of dying from it increase by five percent every three minutes. The way you are leaning against me tells me that several of your ribs have been cracked or broken, and every movement increases the odds of one or both of your lungs being punctured. If that does happen, the likelihood of you dying increases dramatically.”

Cassian sighs. “Your bedside manner could use some work, Kay.”

“I am not a medical droid. I have no bedside manner. You told me to give you something to think about, and I am thinking about your injuries.”

Cassian understands that K-2SO cataloguing and commenting on his injuries is the droid’s way of showing he cares, his way of reminding Cassian that he’s invested in Cassian’s fate. It is, perhaps, the closest K-2SO can come to expressing outright affection.

The old K-2SO, reprogrammed by Cassian, might have been more obvious, might have literally told Cassian that he hopes he doesn’t die.

This new one, reprogrammed by the Corellian Resistance, tells Cassian how likely his death is instead.

It’ll have to do.

“Anything else, Kay?” Cassian asks.

“I do not like going into Imperial buildings without you, or other rebels, Cassian,” K-2SO says. “I _knew_ I should have come inside with you in the first place.”

Cassian realizes then that this was likely why K-2SO had been so unwilling to come get him. K-2SO has never had to traverse through an unknown Imperial building like this warehouse on his own before.

“You did good, Kay,” Cassian mutters.

“I am a reprogrammed droid, but I _look_ like an Imperial one and someone might have--”

“But no one did,” Cassian presses. “C’mon, Kay. You’re a rebel now.”

He’s slurring his words a little, and quickly fading from consciousness, and he probably sounds a bit more sarcastic and condescending than he’d really intended to.

(Above him, K-2SO has turned his head, and is staring down at Cassian, mysteriously touched by the words. _You’re a rebel now_. K-2SO knows he and Cassian still have a strained, fractured friendship, but those words from someone he trusts, someone he might even admire, settle into his circuits. He’ll remember them.)

K-2SO has brought their speeder transport just outside of the warehouse, and he carefully deposits Cassian into the backseat before moving back to the driver’s seat.

The sirens are becoming increasingly loud; they need a place to hide, and, preferably, a place for Cassian to be treated. But it’s more important that they hide, that they are not discovered by the Empire. Cassian would rather bleed out and die than be caught, and he knows the Alliance would much prefer this as well.

He uses his last seconds of consciousness to reel off the address of the nearest Corulag Alliance safehouse, and not a medical center.

He passes out before K-2SO can respond.

* * *

Cassian opens his eyes, and finds himself lying on pristinely white sheets, on a narrow white bed, staring up at a ceiling painted to look like space.

He recognizes Corulag, its green-blue color, and sees its three moons painted around it, all glowing in a myriad of different colors, all different sizes. He looks at the painted sun, Corulus, and hundreds of glittering silver stars, and blinks slowly, oddly warm and content.

“You’re awake.”

Cassian turns his head away from studying a gray moon of Corulag, and sees that there is, of all people, a Fondorian woman in the room with him. Like all Fondorians, she’s completely hairless, her skin smooth and pink, and her eyes dark pinpricks.

She stands, moving to his bedside, and smiles down at him, adjusting the sleeves of her gray tunic. “Good afternoon, Captain Andor.”

“Afternoon,” Cassian repeats. “What time is it?”

“Sixteen-hundred hours,” the woman replies. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Cassian looks down, and sees that his shirt has been removed, and there’s a bacta patch over the blaster wound just above his hip, and that his arm is hooked up to a blood transfusion machine, which is humming softly, pumping blood into his veins.

“You also had three cracked ribs, and two broken ones. The top of your hip was chipped, and the wall of your stomach was torn, and bile was leaking into your abdomen. You were, perhaps, thirty minutes away from dying of internal bleeding, or blood loss. Either one. It would have been quite quick.”

Cassian files this information away, staring at his chest. The skin of his abdomen is bruised, but in a way that makes it look like he was beaten weeks ago, when it can’t have been that long, though the woman’s use of the past tense makes him uncertain.

“What day is it?” He asks, just to check.

The woman smiles. “Your droid friend brought you here about thirteen hours ago.”

“How am I…?” He uses his free arm to gesture to his torso and hip. He feels shockingly well, nearly recovered, and he knows this should not be possible.

The woman leans closer, and raises her hand over Cassian’s abdomen as he stares, bewildered. Before he can say anything, he feels a sudden rush of hot air pass over his stomach, like the sun has just emerged from behind cloud to brush against his bare skin.

But he’s indoors, and there is no sun; only a soft blue-white light, coming from this woman’s pale hand.

She turns her dark eyes to him. “Do not be afraid.”

He suddenly understands why a Fondorian woman might be on Corulag. She’s in hiding.

“You’re force-sensitive,” Cassian says. “Are you jedi?”

He read about force healing at the Royal Imperial Academy. It was a technique the jedi honed and taught, and a small subset of them studied the field specifically, at the Jedi Academy on Coruscant.

“I was an apprentice when the Temple burned,” the woman murmurs. “My master got me out. I was never a full jedi. But I heal where I can, and help the Rebel Alliance when I can.”

“Thank you,” Cassian says softly.

“The Force moves strongly around you, Captain Andor. That tells me that you have much to do, and so I help you.”

Cassian looks away from her dark eyes at that. “If you say so.”

“Ha. A non-believer.”

“Not necessarily,” Cassian says. He thinks of Jeseej, who he hasn’t thought of in years, but who was someone who seemed to have a familiarity with Cassian’s past and identity that could not be explained, a familiarity he seemed to gain through using the Force.

And he thinks of the Angels of Iego, and their benevolent light, and how they saved him, when they didn’t have to, how they saved him even after witnessing him assassinate a man, how they told him that he was gray, but still needed.

“Ah,” the woman says, like something has clicked. He can only assume she has looked into his mind like Jeseej did, but finds he’s too exhausted and relaxed to really care. Where Jeseej used the Force to benefit his illegal business, this healing woman seems to use the Force to help others, and that’s a cause Cassian can get behind.

“You simply do not believe you deserve to be saved,” the woman says.

Cassian blinks. He can’t deny that, but he’d also rather not get into it.

“The Force chooses to help me at very strange times,” he says instead.

The Force did not save Gabriel, or Serafima, or Nerezza. It did not save Wada. It did not save Sebastian from him. It did not save Taraja from Zeferino. It did not intervene and help Alfie.

Cassian suspects the Force is real, is an actual energy, but it is entirely unattainable to him, and he’s never been interested in something he cannot control himself. He cannot manipulate it to help him, or others, and so he doesn’t bother thinking about it much.

The woman laughs. “Have a little faith, Captain. Just once more.”

Her words ring in his head, like he’s heard them before. But he knows he hasn’t.

He blinks, and changes the subject.

“My droid; where is he?”

“I shooed him out,” the woman says, straightening again. “His chatter was making me nervous, as did all the _questions_ he asked when I tried to heal you. I require concentration to do my healing work, and your friend was making that very difficult.”

Cassian smiles. “Yes. He’s… a bit much.”

“He tries. For you.”

Cassian is quickly reminded of how force users have also made him very uncomfortable.

“I need to get going,” he says, and jerks the needle from his elbow, pressing his thumb against the thin hole in his arm, wincing at the forming bruise. He gets to his feet and sways a little, but keeps his balance. He looks down at his discolored chest, notes the scars from the three blaster shots from K-2SO on Iego, and the thin vibroblade scar from Coruscant.

The bacta patch on his hip is likely hiding another new scar.

He couldn’t possibly care about it.

The woman hands him his shirt, her dark eyes thoughtful.

“I would tell you to move a little more slowly, the next few days,” she says, “But my advice would fall on ignoring ears.”

Cassian smiles wanly at her, pulling his shirt on. “Sorry.”

“You’ve a busy week ahead of you. I’ve done what I can to prepare your body; it is up to you to prepare your mind.”

He pauses, one hand reaching for his cut and singed jacket. “A busy week?”

“Indeed. You’d best get going, Captain.”

“Right,” Cassian mutters. “Um. Thank you, uh…”

“Alkmene.”

“Alkmene,” Cassian says. “Thank you.”

“No.” She reaches out and takes one of Cassian’s hands in both of hers, staring intently at him through dark eyes. “Thank _you_.”

He assumes she isn’t really thanking _him_ , the half-dead Alliance Captain who’d wound up on her doorstep with an Imperial droid, but rather, the Alliance at large, with the war it is currently waging against an Empire that is much bigger and more weaponized than it could ever hope to be. He nods back at the woman in acknowledgement.

(She isn’t thanking the Alliance. She is thanking _him_ , but Cassian will never realize this.)

He leaves the safe house, smiling in relief and gratitude for Alkmene that he can even walk.

* * *

Cassian returns to the ship he’d taken to Corulag with K-2SO. It is a UT-60D U-wing starfighter, twenty-five meters long and about three and a half meters tall. It’s designed for two pilots and eight passengers, and Cassian is largely unused to flying it, as the vast majority of his missions usually only involve himself.

But it’d been available, and so Draven had told him to take it, and K-2SO, to Corulag.

He opens the sliding door and climbs in.

“Kay?”

The interior of the U-wing is basically all cabin, and it’s easy for K-2SO to turn and stare at him from where he’s standing by the comm unit.

“ _Cassian_ ,” K-2SO exclaims. “You’re alive. I calculated your survival at only 41 percent--”

“That high, huh,” Cassian mutters, closing the door and shrugging off his torn jacket. He can spend the flight to Yavin 4 fixing it.

“That Fendorian woman was _very_ rude to me--”

“I doubt that,” Cassian says, shoving past K-2SO to start the ship. He doesn’t know if the Empire might still be on the lookout for whoever set off alarms in Warehouse 4A at the shipyards, and he isn’t interested in finding out. “Any messages?”

“Yes. From base, and one from someone called Tivik.”

Cassian freezes, turning to stare at K-2SO. “Tivik. When?”

“Yes, about three hours ago. Here--”

Cassian pushes K-2SO out of his way, moving back to the comm unit. He flicks through his other messages succinctly, before locating the one from Tivik, his contact with the Partisans, the one he met three years previously.

_News from Jedha. Ring of Kafrene. Sector 39. Eighteen-hundred hours_.

“Kriff,” Cassian breathes.

The Alliance has not been in touch with Saw Gerrera, or his Partisans, for a year and a half. Mon Mothma had made an executive decision to cut ties with Gerrera after a particularly vicious series of attacks his Partisans had orchestrated across several Imperial worlds, killing a handful of key Imperial figures, but also leaving thousands of civilians dead. Gerrera, and the Partisans, are on their own.

The Alliance knows that the Partisans are based on Jedha, and have been for over a year now, trying to combat the Empire’s theft of kyber crystals from the moon. But the reason for this, why the Empire has been mining the kyber crystals, has not been discovered.

Kyber crystals are an incredible resource. The Empire mining so many, and so obviously, has been a great cause of concern.

The Alliance _needs_ this information.

_Cassian_ needs this information.

He’s been on this trail for a while now, and all signs are pointing to something big. Some kind of weapon.

Garm Bel Iblis, who’d gone to Darkknell after Cassian had helped assassinate his family four years previously, had found bare bones intelligence on the planet suggesting the Empire was planning a weapon aimed for massive destruction. There have been plenty of rumors and whispers of such a thing in the years since, and Cassian himself has come across more bits and pieces of such information in the last six months than he has in all his time in Alliance Intelligence before.

(If he had been paying attention--if he’d known what to look for--he could’ve found out more, fifteen years ago, in the Atrivis Sector, in the Horuz System.)

But he’s never gotten solid intelligence, no undeniable confirmation.

Tivik, who as far as Cassian knows has been on Jedha for over a year, could very well have it.

And him wanting to tell Cassian, and by default the Alliance, what he knows, even as Gerrera openly rages against the Alliance, suggests that it is very big.

“Kriff,” Cassian repeats. “We should’ve left hours ago.”

The Ring of Kafrene is half a galaxy away.

Cassian dives into the pilot’s seat, starting the takeoff checklist, ignoring his seat buckles.

“Come on, Kay,” he snaps.

K-2SO follows him, settling into his own seat, mirroring Cassian’s movements.

“Where are we going? What about the other messages?”

“They can wait,” Cassian grunts. “The Ring of Kafrene. And as fast as we can.”

* * *

The Ring of Kafrene is in an asteroid belt, just past the edges of the Inner Rim. It is a halfway place, where traders and travelers converge, some bound back for the Core Worlds, while others look for refuge and escape in the Outer Rim. The actual Ring of Kafrene is made up of two linked asteroids, a construction project that began during the Republic and was continued and completed by the Empire.

It reminds Cassian of the Coruscant Underworld, with its inherent griminess, its unknowable occupants, its dark alleys, and smothering industrialization.

He feels fairly comfortable here.

Cassian walks through the crowds, wearing his newer, darker Alliance jacket, since he still has to fix his tan Corellian-cut one.

He’d spent the flight to the Ring of Kafrene urging the U-wing on, pushing it faster and faster, remembering all the information on starships he’d ever been taught by Wada and his instructors at the Royal Imperial Academy, all in an effort to cut the standard travel time a trip from Corulag to the Ring would normally make.

His efforts have been rewarded: he’s half an hour late to meet Tivik, as opposed to two hours.

He’s left K-2SO in the U-wing, to check it over, and make sure Cassian’s literal on the fly, jury-rigging work on the trip over has not resulted in significant damage to the U-wing.

They’ll have to go back to Yavin 4 after this.

Hopefully with some new intelligence.

As he slides past vendors and patrons, Cassian notes how his leg doesn’t hurt, how his stomach no longer aches. He’d removed the bacta patch from his hip on the flight over, noting the surprisingly thin scar left behind, looking like it was months old, rather than hours.

Cassian’s feelings towards the Force are still uncertain, but he can now attest that force healing is the real deal.

He wonders if Alkmene might one day be convinced to join the Alliance on a more permanent basis.

Cassian walks past a building with a grimy _39_ emblazoned on it, noting the stormtroopers loitering in the area, on the lookout for suspicious activity. Illegal activity frequently goes on in the Ring of Kafrene, and he suspects that that’s why the stormtroopers are here.

But they wouldn’t say no to arresting an Alliance Intelligence officer.

He ducks into a side alley, turning his head left and right, and then finds a small enclave.

Tivik is there, looking worse for wear, and oddly hunched over. The reason for this is given when he turns upon hearing Cassian, who sees now that Tivik is cradling his clearly broken arm against his chest. His round face is a little sweaty, but whether that’s from his persistent anxiety, an anxiety Cassian saw in him on Jedha three years ago, or residual pain from his arm, is unknown.

“I was about to _leave_ ,” he whines, scowling at Cassian.

“I came as fast as I could,” Cassian says, and this is the truth. As Kes Dameron would say, he hauled ass across the galaxy to get here from Corulag, not to mention it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since he was immobilized and bleeding out on an Imperial warehouse floor.

“I have to get back on board, walk with me,” Tivik says, moving to shove past Cassian. But Cassian is quicker, less injured, and perhaps more desperate.

“Where’s your ship heading? Back to Jedha?”

* * *

Tivik is dead.

Cassian has killed him.

He stands in the alley, and stares down at Tivik’s corpse, the two stormtroopers he’d also killed just past Tivik.

Cassian takes a step back, his eyes passing over Tivik’s body.

Cassian then looks ahead of him, at the dark and grimy wall of the alley, and breathes for a moment.

_A planet killer_.

He had to kill Tivik.

The Empire would’ve captured him, and interrogated him, and learned that they had a defector who was feeding information to rebels about their superweapon, their planet killer. They could move this weapon, or track down their defecting pilot, go to Jedha and head off Saw Gerrera and his Partisans. Tivik would’ve told them of Andor, his Alliance contact, and then Cassian would likely not make it out of the Ring of Kafrene, and this confirmation of a planet killer would be lost to the Alliance.

But the guilt, the sorrow, surges in Cassian still.

Tivik, for all his inherent nervousness and anxiety to leave, had still helped Cassian, and the Alliance, when he didn’t have to. He didn’t deserve to die now, not for this.

But he _had_ to.

Cassian tells himself this, and schools his face back to its normal impassivity, the cold and hardened gaze of the callous man he is.

_Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion._

_I’m justified_.

He turns away, leaving Tivik’s body to rot, to be found by stormtroopers, who are only coming closer and closer.

He looks back at the wall of the enclave, his escape route, with its pipes and exhaust vents. He goes to the wall, and wraps his hands around the pipes there.

He might as well be a teenager in the Coruscant Underworld again.

He’s just taken another innocent life, after all.

As he climbs, he thinks of all that Tivik has told him.

For a moment, his sorrow is overwhelmed by dread.

_A planet killer_.

It’s a myth, a lie. Complete nonsense. Something that does not exist. Something that _cannot_ exist.

But this is the Empire.

Cassian knows, better than most, the kind of inhumane, unjustifiable, and ruthlessly evil acts the Empire is capable of committing, and creating.

He can still see the dark trooper on Fest, the man turned machine, the man made undone, whenever he closes his eyes. He can still see Alfie, in the Jenoport prison, whenever he turns his head.

A planet killer might be possible. The Empire does have the technology, does have the scientists.

_Erso_. Cassian has heard that name before.

His memory has never let him forget anything Ethan Bain ever said to him.

_“And there’s this other guy… Not in my division, he’s off working on some top-secret project… Anyway, his name’s Galen Erso, he’s a scientist. Real mysterious, but he talks to just about everyone. Checking in.”_

Ethan had worked in Advanced Weapons Research on Coruscant. Galen Erso had been a scientist there, though Ethan had never found out what Erso was working on. It hadn’t seemed that important, not at the time, and then Cassian had killed Sebastian less than a month later and Ethan had--

Cassian has thought of Ethan Bain in the last couple minutes, and now he thinks of Sebastian Bain, the child he comforted and murdered.

Tivik had looked so lost, so hopeless and broken, when he’d realized Cassian had trapped him. It was a naked and oddly innocent look Cassian has seen before, in the faces of children, the rebel children of Fest, and Sebastian on Coruscant.

Cassian had known, instantly, what he had to do.

He’d moved to Tivik’s side, pressing up close to him, leaning over his shoulder. Tivik had stopped moving, turning his head back to Cassian, likely puzzled by this gentle move from Cassian now.

He’d never known Cassian Andor to be gentle.

He’d only known him to be an Alliance spy, one who three years ago brokered a meeting between Saw Gerrera and the fledgling Alliance, back when it was just a series of Resistance groups. Tivik knew Cassian to be dismissive, and cool, uninterested in small talk or friendly chatter. He knew Cassian to be all business, sharp, and calculating, a cruel man who will twist Tivik’s broken arm to the point of agonizing pain, in order to get Tivik to talk.

All this to mean that Tivik knew _exactly_ who Cassian Andor is.

_“Calm down, calm down,” Cassian had murmured with a soft smile, one that Tivik could see from the corner of his eye. “We’ll be alright.”_

Tivik likely didn’t understand why Cassian had been comforting him.

Because he has never known, never learned, that Cassian’s history includes an instance of comforting someone right before he murdered them.

He missed the way Cassian’s smile had disappeared as he pulled the trigger of his pistol, and shot him.

The smaller man had fallen to the ground, next to the stormtroopers Cassian had also killed.

Cassian keeps climbing up the alley wall.

He forces himself to put Tivik’s scared face out of his mind.

He has intelligence to share with the Alliance on Yavin 4.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alkmene is a Latin name for “moon”, to remind you how Ridiculous I am.
> 
> The ROGUE ONE novelization, by Alexander Freed, says that Cassian went to the Ring of Kafrene from Corulag, but does not go into great detail as to what all happened on Corulag; Cassian being shot and almost dying was something I came up with. The novel also suggests that K-2SO was not with him, but I have obviously changed that.
> 
> At the end of the novelization, when Cassian is injured after falling from the tower in the data vault on Scarif, he remembers an instance where K-2SO carried him, grievously injured, to a safehouse, and listed off Cassian’s injuries as they went. Cassian reflects that it was the last time he was in anywhere near the same amount of pain as he is on Scarif; in this transformative work, it was only a few days previously.
> 
> All the dialogue you’ve never heard before, or scenes you don’t recognize, was made up by me, in my interpretation of how the events of ROGUE ONE played out beyond what the movie shows us. I borrowed background details from the novelization by Alexander Freed (and I clarify which details these are) and included quotes from the film, but I do not include dialogue quotes or extra scenes from the novel.


	42. Catching Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-six years old, and waiting for his next mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes direct quotes from ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

Cassian is twenty-six years old, and waiting for his next mission.

He’s in a meeting on base on Yavin 4 with Mon Mothma, Draven, and a handful of other Intelligence officers. He’s just returned from the Ring of Kafrene, and has told them everything Tivik managed to tell him there, everything about the planet killer, and Saw Gerrera, and the unknown Imperial pilot defector, and Galen Erso.

“Galen Erso _was_ an old friend of Saw’s,” Draven mutters, flicking through one datapad before shoving it away, and accepting another handed to him by a harried aide. “They met through Erso’s wife, Lyra. The Ersos were close enough to Saw that he took responsibility for their daughter, Jyn, thirteen years ago. She was eight or nine years old at the time.”

“Why?” Mothma asks from her seat at the table, hands clasped neatly together, eyes thoughtful. “What happened to the Ersos?”

“Lyra hasn’t been seen since,” Draven says. “She’s likely dead. But Galen was recruited for some kind of Imperial science work.” Draven looks up, meeting Cassian’s eyes, where he’s sitting at the table near Mothma. “You said Galen Erso works in an offshoot division of Advanced Weapons Research on Coruscant?”

“Yes,” Cassian says. “At least he did, as of seven years ago.”

Draven’s eyes narrow. “Any way to confirm this?”

Cassian blinks, and sees Ethan screaming at him on the streets of CoCo Town.

_“I’m done with your kriffing Rebellion! And I’m done with you, Cassian Andor, or Joreth Sward, or whoever the hell you are!”_

“No,” Cassian says. “But I’m certain.”

“Hm,” Draven murmurs. He pauses for a moment, before nodding tightly.

“It would align with what we know of Erso,” he says.

“And now he’s sent the proof of this… planet killer, to Saw,” Mothma says, glancing at Cassian, who nods. Her lips purse, and she looks at the smooth tabletop.

Draven’s face sours. “He won’t see us. There’s too much bad blood, too much animosity. Gerrera has made it _very_ clear that he won’t deal with anyone from the Alliance anymore, especially not if the information we want came to him from an old friend.”

“Perhaps…” Mothma looks up from the table. “Perhaps he will deal with someone who is not with the Alliance, but _is_ connected to Erso.”

While Draven stares, Cassian knows exactly who she’s talking about.

“The daughter,” he says.

Mothma’s smooth face is carefully blank, mouth tense. “Is she still with the Partisans, on Jedha?”

Draven turns, snapping his fingers impatiently, and another aide approaches him, datapad ready. Draven flicks through it.

“No,” he says, sounding pleased. “Jyn Erso did fight with the Partisans for eight years, was by all accounts an accomplished and dedicated member, but left the group when she was sixteen. She’s accumulated quite the rap sheet since then, as well as an… extensive list of aliases. She’s smart; she doesn’t go by her birth name anymore.”

From Draven’s tone of voice, Cassian infers he’s impressed against his will.

Draven passes the datapad to Mothma, whose eyebrows rise at the information.

“Tanith Ponta, Kestrel Dawn, and Liana Hallik,” Mothma reads. “Can we find her using one of these names?”

“Yes ma’am,” Draven says, sounding entirely too confident, to Cassian at least, considering they’re about to look for a woman who clearly doesn’t want to be found, trained by Saw Gerrera himself.

“Why did she leave the Partisans?” Cassian asks.

“We don’t know,” Draven says, sounding vaguely uninterested. “We’ve only estimated the date of her departure, from when she was last spotted with the Partisans, and when she started using her aliases.”

“Why _would_ she leave Saw, and the Partisans?” Mothma wonders. “If Saw cared for her for so long?”

“Maybe she didn’t leave them,” Cassian murmurs. “Maybe they left her.”

_“You remind me of someone I knew,” Gerrera says. “I found her ten years ago now. She was someone who fought for me, unquestioningly. Loyal. Brave. Someone whose moral compass pointed them towards their chosen family, the Partisans, and me, above all else.”_

_“What happened to them?” Cassian asks._

_Gerrera’s face darkens. “I decided what was good for the Partisans… Was not the same as what was good for her.”_

It’s a long shot, but the dates do match up.

“It would make sense for Gerrera to dump Erso,” Draven comments. “The Empire is probably interested in her, with her connection to Galen Erso. And she knows it, too, since she’s not going by her birth name anymore.”

“But Gerrera took her in,” Cassian points out.

He hadn’t liked Saw Gerrera much, the first and only time he met with him. But Cassian remembers how Gerrera had smiled at him, how pleased he’d been to know a man like Cassian was working for the Rebel Alliance, as he was someone who reminded Gerrera of himself. It’d been a similarity Cassian had hated at the time, and hates even more now.

Jyn Erso was sixteen years old when Gerrera abandoned her. She was a child.

Cassian can sympathize with being left alone by someone who was not supposed to leave.

Cassian remembers being sixteen years old, and how Wada was the only family he had left in the galaxy, and how losing him when he was seventeen was almost enough to unravel him completely, enough to send him into a deep melancholia, only alleviated by the arrival of Taraja on Coruscant.

Cassian is a killer, a liar, an assassin, and a spy; but he’s never just _abandoned_ someone, not like that.

But he blinks, and remembers Tivik’s childlike eyes, just before Cassian sent a blaster shot into his chest.

 _“I’m not sure you would’ve chosen differently than me, Andor,” Gerrera says_.

Cassian shakes his head, returning to the present when Mothma speaks.

“Then Saw might be very interested in seeing her,” Mothma says. She smiles, turning her eyes back up to Draven. “It’s worth a shot. Let’s see if we can track down Jyn Erso, or whatever name she’s calling herself these days.”

“Yes ma’am,” Draven says. Mothma gets to her feet, offers every officer in the room a soft smile, and then turns, one of her ever-present Chandrilan aides following her out.

Cassian goes to Draven then, accepting the datapad Draven hands him.

“Start going through your criminal contacts,” Draven says. “See if anyone might know a woman matching Erso’s description, or going by one of her aliases. Be discreet, and do not let anyone know exactly who she really is, or why we’re looking for her.”

“Yes sir,” Cassian says.

“If we do manage to track down Erso, you’ll be the one to go with her to Jedha, to meet with Saw and find this defecting pilot and his message, and if possible, Galen after,” Draven continues.

Cassian looks up, a little surprised by this mission assignment.

Draven sighs. “I think Gerrera might be more… amenable, to meeting with you, Andor. He’s met you before, and that meeting yielded positive results for the Alliance. If Erso fails, you’re our next best option in getting Gerrera to talk.”

Instantly, Cassian knows what Draven is telling him. If Gerrera declines a meeting with Jyn Erso, then Cassian is to attempt to arrange one on his own, as the Alliance spy Gerrera met three years previously. It isn’t a bad move or decision on Draven’s part, this idea that Gerrera might be more willing to meet with Cassian than just about anyone else in the Alliance, but it’s still quite dangerous, still quite likely to end with Cassian killed on Jedha.

_“If the Rebellion wrongs me… If they cross me, or try to end my work… I will leave. And I will not come back. And I will not be bothered by anyone from your group ever again. I will kill anyone who tries. Understood?”_

Gerrera had been speaking to Cassian then, and it was a threat he’d passed on to the Alliance. Cassian doesn’t expect Gerrera has changed his mind.

Still, Cassian is a soldier, and he knows exactly who he is, what he does, and where he stands. He nods, signaling he understands what Draven has told him. Draven nods tightly, and walks away.

Cassian watches him leave, and then he looks down at the datapad, going over the description of Jyn Erso: Twenty-two years old, 1.6 meters tall, brown hair, green eyes, light skin.

Entirely ordinary.

He takes the datapad, and walks out of the room.

* * *

“So I heard you had a rough go of it on Corulag.”

Cassian looks up from where he’s pouring over his contacts list, and spots Melshi leaning against the doorway of his room, smirking at Cassian, arms crossed over his chest.

Cassian sighs. “I didn’t know you talk to Kay.”

“He’s a bit of an earworm, but he does have the occasional interesting thing to say,” Melshi says, shrugging. “Force healing, huh? It’s the real deal?”

“I’m still walking.”

“Stumbling across one of the few force healers left in the entire galaxy _would_ happen to you, Andor.”

Cassian rolls his eyes, though he can’t exactly argue with Melshi on this. He does have odd luck, sometimes.

“Is there something I can help you with?” He asks, returning to his work.

“We’ve found Jyn Erso.”

Cassian freezes, spinning around in his chair to face Melshi fully. “Where?”

“Wobani,” Melshi says. “Liana Hallik has been sentenced to twenty years hard labor in an Imperial camp. She was caught trying to steal guns belonging to a dictator on Corulag, believe it or not. This was before you were there, obviously, but still… Funny coincidence.”

“I think I got away with the lesser punishment,” Cassian notes.

Imperial labor camps are notoriously cruel and vicious. Jyn Erso won’t make it five years in one.

“No droyk,” Melshi agrees. “Anyway, I’m leading the raid to spring her, with Bravo Team. Was wondering if I could take K-2SO with us.”

Cassian frowns. “You don’t need to ask me for permission.”

“Yeah, well, Kay-Tu told me to.”

“He just doesn’t want to go to Wobani,” Cassian mutters. Wobani is a cold, lonesome Imperial stronghold planet in the Mid Rim, exactly the kind of place K-2SO has been known to want to avoid.

“Aye,” Melshi says. “He’s got the kind of muscle we could use, though.”

“He’ll go if you order him to,” Cassian says. Melshi crooks an eyebrow, somewhat disbelieving, so Cassian adds, “Tell him I told him to go with you.”

“Cheers,” Melshi says. He looks down at the floor for a moment, and Cassian, who has only spoken to Melshi in brief snatches of conversation for months now, notices how tired he looks, how pale and drawn his face is.

“You okay?” Cassian asks.

Melshi nods, raising his eyes again. “Yeah, sure. It’s just… Kind of nice, yeah? Chivalrous? Rescuing a young woman from an Imperial prison? That’s something, that’s… That’s good.”

And Cassian gets it. He knows exactly what he means.

Melshi is in Special Forces, not Intelligence like Cassian, but they’ve worked together a handful of times, and Cassian has read numerous reports detailing Melshi’s other missions. He suspects that Melshi sometimes struggles with the more difficult aspects of his work for the Alliance, the killings, the shoot-outs, the bombings, the robberies.

Cassian can relate.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. Still, he points out, “She _is_ a criminal.”

“Yeah, well. So are we.”

“That’s true,” Cassian says, smiling a little. “I guess I mean that she’s a… different type of criminal.”

By that he means, _She hasn’t fought for our cause for six years, and the only reason we’re even breaking her out now is because we have no other option_.

“I don’t imagine she’ll be very keen to come to Yavin 4,” Cassian says.

“I am _very_ persuasive. I’m a kriffing delight.”

“Get going,” Cassian snorts, rolling his eyes.

Melshi gives him an exaggerated salute, and then turns, walking away.

* * *

Wobani isn’t too far from Yavin 4, and so it only takes a little over a day for Extraction Team Bravo to go to Wobani, locate the labor camp Liana Hallik is serving in, and break her out. However, their U-wing experiences a “minor technical setback” after extraction, wherein they are unable to jump to hyperspace. Luckily, K-2SO manages to send a message that is received by a rebel starfighter squadron in the area, who escort the transport to safety.

What this means is that both Draven and Mothma are more tightly-strung than normal by the time the U-wing carrying Jyn Erso arrives on Yavin 4.

“Minor technical setback,” Draven mutters, Cassian walking quickly alongside him into the Temple, headed to the conference room where they are to meet Jyn Erso. “Of course we somehow give them a problematic U-wing, of _course_.”

Cassian, wisely, says nothing. He does agree that it’s terrible luck, but Bravo Team has still managed to pick up Jyn Erso and bring her to Yavin 4, so no harm really done.

Mothma is already in the conference room, along with General Jan Dodonna, the man in charge of running the Alliance base, who Cassian has talked with a handful of times. The man is much older than him, white-haired, and perpetually frowning. He’s currently locked in tense discussion with Mothma, and his eyes only flicker over Draven and Cassian in greeting.

Draven steps away from Cassian, moving to join the two.

Cassian looks around the dimly lit room, spotting analysts and communication specialists, passing soldiers, and aides.

He looks past the table, towards the back of the large room, and recognizes the profile of Bail Organa.

Organa drops in to Base One fairly frequently; he has to, as a member of the Alliance High Council. But he usually only comes through for big meetings with other councilors. Him being here now suggests that Mothma herself has called him in, which only highlights how seriously Mothma is taking this rumor of a planet killer.

Mothma and Organa are the two councilors most desperate for a diplomatic resolution to the war.

No such thing will be possible if the Empire really does have a planet killer.

Cassian has known, most of his life, that there is no reasoning with the Empire. It will continue its crushing stranglehold on the galaxy, with its ruthless operations and tyrannical battles, until it has destroyed all opposition. Cassian does not believe a political solution is possible; it’s just a matter of time before the war officially begins.

(Cassian will not live to see this official start.)

He looks away from Organa upon the arrival of a soldier, escorting a young woman in cuffs.

The woman is steered to the chair facing the main conference table, and she sits, taking in her surroundings with unblinking eyes. She looks exhausted, lips pursed, maintaining a look that somehow conveys both disinterest and dissatisfaction, as if she has plenty of other places she would rather be.

Her big green eyes flicker to Cassian, and he meets her gaze unflinchingly for a moment or two, until she turns away, studying Mothma, and Draven, who has stepped forward.

“You’re currently calling yourself Liana Hallik, is that correct?” Draven asks, voice nonchalant, because he knows this is true, and Jyn Erso likely knows that he does too.

She stares at him, waiting. She doesn’t so much as blink, and Cassian can’t help but be a little impressed at her indifference, here in a place she’s never seen before; she likely has no idea what system she’s even currently in.

Cassian watches as Draven grows tired of her passivity.

Cassian watches as Jyn Erso is dissected by the Alliance.

Draven is cutting, while Mothma is kind.

Mothma doesn’t introduce herself, which Cassian thinks is risky; he puts the odds at about fifty-fifty that Jyn Erso, a criminal and outcast, has not yet realized where she is, and who this roomful of people are.

Mothma does introduce him, though.

“This is Captain Cassian Andor,” she says, nodding in Cassian’s direction, and he straightens, sliding back into the military posture he was taught at the Royal Imperial Academy, but keeping his arms crossed. “Rebel Alliance Intelligence.”

That ought to give Jyn Erso a clue as to what this all is about.

Cassian steps closer to Jyn Erso, but keeps his distance. Without preamble, he asks, “When was the last time you were in contact with your father?”

* * *

Cassian is angry.

He’d tried to interrogate Jyn Erso, to disarm and bewilder her, but she’d fought right back.

He’s tried to find out what she knows of her father. They need to determine how much Jyn Erso knows about her father, to see if she’s aware of his work. Because if she’s aware of his work, she might know the details of it, might be able to offer them information right here, and right now, intelligence they can use to help verify the planet killer independently, before going to Jedha.

But she’d prefer to think her Imperialist father _dead_.

That had made him think that maybe Jyn Erso _does_ sympathize with the cause. Maybe it would be easy to convince her to go with him to Jedha, to help him get in touch with Gerrera.

Maybe she is exactly the same kind of criminal as him, after all.

Her next words had dashed his meager hope.

_“I’ve never had the luxury of political opinions.”_

_Luxury_ , Cassian thinks. It isn’t a word he’s ever associated with himself, or his work, or the Fest Rebellion, or the Coruscant Rebellion, or the Corellian Resistance, or the Alliance. It’s a word for the privileged, and the wealthy. It’s a word for Empress Teta, and the Galactic Opera House. It’s a word for Imperialists.

Cassian doesn’t so much as have _political opinions_ as he has _his life_.

He’s forgotten there are people in the galaxy who ignore the war between the Empire and the Alliance.

The war is something that Cassian has never been without; it’s his biggest constant.

He knows plenty of others who feel the same.

His voice had been harder when he’d spoken to her again, to ask her about Saw.

Her eyes had shuttered, and he’d heard a trace of a never-fully-healed bruise in her voice when she’d told him that it’d been awhile since she’d seen Saw Gerrera.

The ache resonated in her tone; it’s something he’s heard before.

She hadn’t understood why they wanted to know about her relationship with Saw, and Cassian had seen that she wanted to ask more, wanted to be more defiant, until Draven had reminded her that she has no power here, that the Alliance was ready and willing to put her back where they’d found her.

On Wobani. In the Imperial labor camp. Where she can’t escape.

It is a death sentence in more than one way for someone like Jyn Erso.

She’d been more willing to talk after that.

But she still hadn’t understood why they needed her.

“Saw Gerrera’s an extremist,” Mothma says. “His militancy has caused the Alliance a great many problems. We have no choice but to try and mend that broken trust.”

Jyn Erso all but flinches at those words, _broken trust_ , and Cassian realizes that Jyn might actually be the Partisan that Saw Gerrera had described to him three years ago.

_“You remind me of someone I knew,” Gerrera says. “I found her ten years ago now.”_

Cassian stares at Jyn Erso, and doesn’t understand how Gerrera found him and her similar.

“What does this have to do with my father?” Jyn snaps.

Cassian turns, in time to catch Mothma’s nod to him.

It is Cassian who tells her about the defecting pilot, and Saw, and the planet killer.

Jyn Erso stares up at him, and Cassian realizes that she doesn’t truly care about this revelation, not when she’s waiting to find out why she’s here. It almost makes him want to draw his next sentence out more, but he can’t, not with the Alliance leaders watching him.

“The pilot says… he was sent by your father.”

Jyn Erso’s eyes widen more, and her lips part, the shock playing out almost comically slow over her face. Cassian stares, unsure what to make of someone who is less surprised by the news of a planet killer, and more surprised by the news that their father is still alive.

He listens as Draven tells Jyn of his mission, to go to Jedha and authenticate the rumor, and Mothma tells Jyn that they’re hoping Saw will help them find Galen Erso, so he can testify before the Senate.

None of this is news to Cassian, who’s been briefed on this mission. He does catch a slight tightening of Draven’s face; he doesn’t fully agree with the mission parameters.

Cassian looks away from Draven as Organa moves closer to the table, surveying Jyn thoughtfully, but saying nothing.

“And if I do it?” Jyn asks.

Mothma offers a ghost of a smile. “We’ll make sure you go free.”

There’s the word Jyn Erso has been looking for. Cassian watches as her eyes flicker through the faces, lingering on Organa, and Cassian, before turning back to Mothma.

“Deal,” Jyn Erso says.

Mothma offers Jyn Erso a real smile this time, inclining her head as a sign of gratitude. Draven still looks oddly sour about the whole thing, while Dodonna looks just as tense and grim as ever. Organa turns away from Jyn, and meets Cassian’s eyes, inclining his head in acknowledgement, a move Cassian returns.

Draven turns to Cassian. “Take K-2SO, and the U-wing from your Corulag mission; you’ll need the room if you’re bringing back passengers.”

By that, Cassian knows he means Jyn Erso, and the Imperial pilot, and maybe even Galen Erso.

Cassian nods his understanding.

“Leave as soon as possible,” Draven adds, glancing at Jyn Erso, who’s still seated, staring around the room of murmuring rebels. “And be… smart.”

“Yes sir,” Cassian says. He uncrosses his arms and turns, ready to leave the conference room, to head out and find K-2SO, to tell him to ready the U-wing, so he can gather the things he needs for this mission to Jedha.

But he pauses, and looks at Jyn Erso one more time.

She turns, and looks back at him.

She’s twenty-two years old, four years younger than him, and looks it. She has long dark brown hair tied back messily, and big green eyes, and an expression on her face that suggests she’s daring not only the assorted rebels, but the galaxy as a whole to approach her, to doubt her, to give her any excuse to reach out and tear, and bite, and claw.

It is a low-simmering rage, an understated fire, that Cassian has seen before.

In Nerezza. In Taraja.

In himself; or at least, in the person he used to be.

He’s so tired now, so exhausted, single-minded, and unforgiving. He doesn’t have much of a fire anymore; if anything, he’s the ashes of the forest that the fire has consumed.

He’s doing this work because he _has_ to. There is nothing more for him, nothing else. Just the cause, the Alliance, and him, stuck in between. He thinks this has always been the case, though as of late, his devotion and commitment to the Rebellion has felt more and more like a noose, tightening around his neck, daring him to move before it suffocates him.

He looks at Jyn Erso’s face, and thinks that he’s staring into a looking glass that shows his past.

That cavalier, gleeful, and manic determination that defined Nerezza.

That righteous, headstrong, and downplayed fury he loved in Taraja.

That justifiable, smoldering, ever-present rage he used to see in the mirror.

He can barely remember it.

Yet Jyn Erso still lives there.

Despite being abandoned by her family, twice. Despite knowing she lives in an unfair, and unkind galaxy.

It is not a common resilience.

 _“Be brave, Cassi_ ,” Nerezza’s voice whispers in his head, so suddenly and so clearly it’s like she’s standing next to him.

Cassian blinks, tearing his eyes away from Jyn’s, and leaves the room, the hair on the back of his neck standing up.

He wonders if Jyn Erso will burn what is left of him alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That “minor technical setback” is a canon thing that did happen, though it was not in the film.
> 
> All the dialogue you’ve never heard before, or scenes you don’t recognize, was made up by me, in my interpretation of how the events of ROGUE ONE played out beyond what the movie shows us. I borrowed background details from the novelization by Alexander Freed (and I clarify which details these are) and included quotes from the film, but I do not include dialogue quotes or extra scenes from the novel.


	43. Memento Mori

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-six years old, and telling K-2SO that he is to go with Cassian and Jyn Erso to Jedha, to find Saw Gerrera and the Imperial pilot, and the proof of the planet killing weapon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes direct quotes from ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

Cassian is twenty-six years old, and telling K-2SO that he is to go with Cassian and Jyn Erso to Jedha, to find Saw Gerrera and the Imperial pilot, and the proof of the planet killing weapon.

K-2SO is less than thrilled.

“Why do we need _her?_ ” He asks, staring at Cassian in the corridor of the base on Yavin 4.

“She’s our ticket to Gerrera,” Cassian says, walking, forcing K-2SO to walk with him. “We won’t get in to see him without her.”

“She’s very difficult,” K-2SO says, voice carrying in the corridor, causing more than one rebel to turn and watch Cassian and K-2SO as they walk. “She attacked no less than three rebel soldiers during her rescue on Wobani. And she was very ungrateful when I stopped her to show her the ship she was going to get to escape Wobani on, too.”

Cassian suspects there is more to this story than K-2SO is sharing, but finds he doesn’t care.

They’ve arrived at the door to Cassian’s quarters and he opens it, going inside, beginning to gather his things together.

“Do you think it’s a bad idea?” K-2SO asks, hovering in the doorway. “I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Bringing Jyn Erso with us to Jedha?”

“Yes.”

Cassian sighs, pausing in his movements. “I don’t know, Kay. I don’t really know anything about her.”

“I think it’s a bad idea,” K-2SO says again, and Cassian realizes that K-2SO is fishing for him to openly agree with him.

“It might be,” Cassian relents. “You’ll just have to hope that Draven agrees with you and changes the mission.”

He’s being sarcastic, but from the way K-2SO’s gears suddenly whir with enthusiasm, he doesn’t think the droid has picked up on this.

“Indeed,” K-2SO says.

“Get the U-wing ready, okay?”

“Yes, Cassian,” K-2SO says, and walks away.

Cassian listens to the clunking noise of K-2SO walking away, the sound echoing through the corridor. The base is never quiet--how could it possibly be, when it houses the bulk of the Rebel Alliance--but it seems even louder than normal today, with the way that the persistent beeping of droids, drone of ship engines, and chatter of rebels reverberates almost painfully in Cassian’s head.

He closes his eyes for a moment, and lets himself breathe, clutching Wada’s old blue parka in his hands.

“Knock, knock.”

He opens his eyes and turns, spotting Shara leaning in the doorway.

“Heard you got shot on Corulag,” she says.

“Does everyone talk to K-2SO?” Cassian asks, rolling his eyes and returning to his manic packing.

“Nah, I heard from Taidu Sefla,” Shara says.

“How did he--? Never mind.”

Shara steps into the room, sitting on Cassian’s bed and watching him as he adds a med kit, dagger, and spare blaster to the bag.

“Jedha, huh? You ever been?”

“Once, three years ago,” Cassian says.

Shara frowns. “What’s it like?”

“It’s a cold desert moon,” Cassian says, with a shrug. “So very brown, rocky. Dry.”

“Hm.”

“Where’s Kes?”

“His team is off on Dandoran, some kind of raid,” Shara says, lips twisting, and Cassian knows her nonchalance is only a front, that she misses Kes when he isn’t here. “They’re supposed to get back tomorrow.”

“What are you up to?”

“I’ve been handpicked to be part of the x-wing squadron that will pick-up and escort Garm Bel Iblis back here from Corellia in a few days,” Shara says.

“You don’t sound too pleased.”

Shara laughs. “I mean, it’s fine. But. Escorting isn’t the most exciting of missions.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Oh yeah,” Shara says, smirking. “What did you do to piss off Draven? This Jedha mission seems a little below you.”

Cassian shrugs, closing his bag and pulling it over his shoulder. “It could be nothing. Or it could be something.”

“It always is,” Shara notes. “I did catch a glimpse of your new partner. She’s cute.”

“I can introduce you, if you’d like. Put in a good word for you.”

“You’re a real kriffing comedian, Andor, you know that? We as an Alliance don’t talk about that enough.”

Cassian laughs, holding out his arm. Shara takes it, as Cassian throws the parka over his other arm, and the two of them leave his room, walking down the corridor, back to the main hangar of the base.

Shara leans against his side as they walk, and Cassian is, for the moment, almost calm.

“I worry about you, Cass,” Shara says, somewhat abruptly.

“I worry about you too, Shara,” Cassian says, and this is true. Shara is an incredibly talented pilot, but she’s still a pilot in the Rebel Alliance; she gets shot at more often than not.

Shara sighs. “That’s not what I mean, _exactly_. I worry you’re lonely. You’re very good at asking others how they’re doing, asking about their interests, but you very rarely talk about yourself. Bottling up all your… your thoughts, your feelings, it isn’t _good_.”

“I’m fine,” Cassian says, quietly.

“Yeah, somehow I don’t quite believe you.”

They stop outside the room of the Alliance base that’s filled with surplus clothes. Cassian knows that Jyn Erso is in here, has been since the meeting in the conference room adjourned. She came to base from Wobani with only the clothes on her back; she’ll need a coat to make it on Jedha, a colder place than Yavin 4 by far.

Cassian glances into the room, and sure enough, there’s Jyn Erso, studying a dark jacket. She’s staring straight at him, and he holds her gaze until her eyes slide over to Shara. He watches as Jyn pulls the jacket on, and then turns, walking further into the room, towards the gloves.

Cassian looks at Shara. “You think I should be more… open? Emotional? Shara, I’m a spy.”

“I just…” Shara sighs. “Cass. Are you _happy?_ ”

Her words are almost enough to make Cassian laugh. He does crack a smile, but he knows it’s sad.

“I’m okay, Shara,” he says. “I know who I am, and I’m okay with it. Please. Believe me.”

“Fine,” Shara says, dragging the word out exaggeratedly, signaling to Cassian that she isn’t content with his response, and will likely want to bring the subject up again. She reaches forward, wrapping him in her arms in a warm hug, and Cassian returns the hug, turning his face, and pressing his cheek into her curly dark hair, that same hair he saw on Serafima and Nerezza.

 _I was happy then, with them_ , he thinks, and he knows it’s true and suspects Shara knows it too.

“Good luck, be safe,” Shara says. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

(She won’t. This is the last time Shara Bey and Cassian Andor see each other.)

“My sister sent me instructions for a new type of vase, and I’m a little curious to try it,” Shara adds. “My potter’s wheel is getting dusty.”

(By the time Shara Bey returns to Yavin 4 from Corellia, Rogue One has flown, Cassian Andor has died, and the Death Star plans he died to steal have been lost.)

Cassian laughs. “I think it’s time Kes learned too, don’t you?”

“He doesn’t have that Sernpidalian touch,” Shara says, and Cassian snorts.

(Shara Bey will give her dusty potter’s wheel to another rebel on base. It will no longer remind her of her home, of Sernpidal, but of Cassian Andor, her and her husband’s younger Festian friend, and his sad dark eyes, and his tired smile.)

“I’ll think about it,” Cassian says.

“And, you know, think about that Jyn Erso,” Shara adds, like she just can’t help herself. “She’s cute. You’re cute. Jedha’s like six hours away. Long flight. Who knows.”

“ _Goodbye_ , Shara.”

Shara cackles, but turns, walking away. Cassian watches her go for a moment before turning to the surplus clothes room, and walking inside.

He does think about what she’s said, but only about the part where she asked him if he was happy.

He knows he was happy on Fest, as a child, and then when he was twenty-two and living on Fest again, four years previously. Fest has always been home to him in some way, has always made him feel welcome and warm, even when he’s surrounded on all sides by thick snow and gray ice.

He goes back further, when he was happy before, and inevitably sees Taraja’s face, allowing himself to remember her more clearly than he has in years.

He hears her laughter, and hears her call his name. He sees her wide smile, and her sparkling blue eyes. He pictures her on Coruscant, running ahead of him through the Underworld, throwing herself at an alley wall to climb and escape, yelling back to him, peeking out at him from behind the gray scarf she so rarely went without, the gift from him that she’d adored.

He blinks, and thinks he actually is seeing her.

He blinks again, and realizes he’s standing behind Jyn Erso, and her back is to him, and she’s winding Taraja’s old gray scarf around her neck.

Jyn is shorter than Taraja was, but she dresses similarly, in black and gray, and the dark paint around her eyes looks to be made of the same material as the blue paint Taraja would wear, and she is wearing the literal, exact same gray scarf, the one Cassian had left in this room last year.

He can only stare.

Jyn turns, looking up, and tugging her hair out from under the scarf. “What?”

“Why are you wearing that scarf?” Cassian asks, and his voice is hoarser than he’d like, his shock paramount.

Jyn raises an eyebrow. “Jedha’s a cold desert moon. I don’t want sand to get in my eyes.”

Cassian knows exactly what she means; he’s used this exact scarf for that same reason before. But this is the wrong time of the year for sandstorms on Jedha, and he tells her as much.

“Then it’s a scarf, and it’ll keep me warm,” Jyn says, speaking slowly, like Cassian is being ridiculous, and it’s a fair belief.

“But why _this_ scarf?”

Because there are other scarves, lined up on hooks behind Jyn, scarves in all colors and sizes. And most of them are cleaner, and less stained with ash and blood, less obviously second-hand.

Cassian had put this scarf in this room with the near-guarantee that it’d be left untouched, out of his sight, and out of his mind.

He doesn’t know what to make of Jyn Erso choosing _this scarf_.

Jyn shrugs, arranging the edges of the scarf carefully around her shoulders. “I dunno. I just picked it.”

“Humor me.”

Some of his desperation, his discomposure, must seep into his voice, for Jyn Erso stills, looking at him.

“I like it,” she says, voice rising. “I like forgotten things, or things people leave for dead. This is the most beaten, sad-looking scarf in this room. So I _want_ it. Do you have a problem with that?”

Cassian stares at her. He thinks she isn’t telling the whole truth, but he can read between the lines and parse out what she isn’t saying:

 _I’ve been abandoned, and I don’t like seeing others get left behind, too_.

He opens his mouth, and he almost tells her his own half-truth: _I left that scarf in here. On purpose_.

The full, unstated truth being, _I left that scarf in here, because it belonged to my dead girlfriend, and seeing it and being reminded of her, constantly, was enough to drive me to the point of distracted melancholy._

“No,” he says at last, and instead. “No, of course. It’s fine.”

“Uh huh,” Jyn says, looking entirely unconvinced. “Are you sure?”

“Trust me,” Cassian snaps.

Jyn’s expression darkens more, and she crosses her arms. “Trust you? Because I have a choice here?”

She doesn’t, really.

She doesn’t have that _luxury_.

It is a situation Cassian doesn’t envy. It is a truth he can’t deny.

She’s wearing Taraja’s scarf, and he can’t do anything about it, not without leading to painful and uncomfortable questions, not without Jyn thinking him unhinged, or ridiculous, or unnecessarily nostalgic.

That isn’t who he is. He doesn’t want her to think that’s who he is. He’s better than that.

 _“She’s cute,”_ Shara says in his mind, and Cassian jerks his head, already anxious for this whole mission to be over.

“Let’s get going,” he says.

Jyn Erso nods tightly, and doesn’t question him.

It is a higher trust than he deserves. More trust than he knows what to do with.

* * *

Jyn Erso follows Cassian through the base, and through the main hangar. He does his best not to look over at her, but he still catches glimpses of her from the corner of his eye, catches a flash of gray, and feels his heart skip a beat.

_She’s wearing Taraja’s scarf._

He should’ve just burned the damn thing with Taraja.

Or buried it in the back of his closet.

He thinks the number of people in the galaxy who would’ve picked that tattered gray scarf over all of the other scarves in the surplus room is very small, and is pretty sure this means that finding one of these people, and working with them in such close proximity now, means his luck has taken a turn for the worse. It was about time.

They reach the U-wing, when Cassian hears Draven call his name.

He shoots Jyn Erso a look, but doesn’t pause to add anything, or to make sure she goes inside. He turns away, and walks to Draven’s side.

Draven jerks his chin back towards Jyn. “How is she?”

Cassian shrugs, standing straight, and tucking his hands behind his back. “Fine, so far.”

“Keep an eye on her. She might try to run on Jedha.”

“Yes, sir.”

Draven’s frown deepens. “I know your orders were to try and bring Galen Erso back to base.”

“Were, sir?”

Draven nods, turning to look at Cassian, who raises his chin, signaling he’s listening.

“Galen Erso is vital to the Empire’s weapons program. Forget what you heard in there. There will be no extraction. You find him, you kill him. Then and there.”

Cassian takes the orders in, keeping his face impassive. He waits until Draven meets his eyes again before he nods tightly.

He turns away, and walks back to the U-wing, his mind oddly quiet.

It makes sense, he knows. To kill Galen Erso. It’ll be just another assassination. Cassian has completed tens of them. This will be no different.

But he climbs into the U-wing, and Jyn Erso stares at him, and he knows, this is going to be different.

He’s never traveled with the daughter of a target before.

Desperate for a distraction, he notices K-2SO, already seated in the co-pilot’s chair. “You met Kay-Tu?”

“Charming,” Jyn says, in the dry tone of voice Cassian has heard people use plenty of times when they describe K-2SO, most recently spoken by Melshi.

“He tends to say whatever comes into his circuits,” Cassian says, standing at the comm unit, readying for take off. “It’s a byproduct of the reprogram.”

Wada had warned him about it, and Cassian and Taraja had quickly learned it to be true. The Corellian Resistance technicians who’d reprogrammed K-2SO had also, apparently, run into the same problem. Unless K-2SO’s painful honesty isn’t a side effect of the reprogramming, but rather just an aspect of his personality.

It wouldn’t really surprise Cassian if that was true.

K-2SO turns his head suddenly. “Why does _she_ get a blaster, and I don’t?”

And Cassian’s blood runs cold.

K-2SO has not been allowed a blaster since Iego, since he put three blaster holes in Cassian’s chest, since he’d caused Cassian’s heart to flatline twice, since Cassian had to be shocked back to life by medics on Jabiim. Draven, and the rest of the Alliance leaders, had determined it was safer to permanently ban K-2SO from having a blaster, rather than risk a repeat malfunctioning that could endanger the life of another rebel, again.

But K-2SO doesn’t know any of this. He doesn’t remember. He only knows he is not allowed a blaster, without understanding why.

However, he isn’t the only one who shouldn’t have a blaster.

“What?” Cassian asks, turning to Jyn, ignoring the latter half of K-2SO’s question.

He sees now that she’s holding a very familiar pistol, one he’d had in his bag.

“I know how to use it,” Jyn says, like that’s what Cassian is worried about.

K-2SO knew how to use a blaster, too, and that knowledge had nearly killed Cassian.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Cassian says, moving back to her, and holding his hand out. “Give it to me.”

Jyn levels her eyes at him, defiant.

“We’re going to _Jedha_ ,” she says. “That’s a war zone.” And then, because Cassian’s stern expression doesn’t waver, she adds, “Trust goes both ways.”

Cassian looks at her, and suddenly understands that even if she doesn’t really have a choice, that Jyn Erso is still _choosing_ to trust him, to trust him to fly her to Jedha, to walk with her through the Holy City, to stay by her side while they try to find Saw Gerrera, and the Partisans. She doesn’t know Cassian, doesn’t know his past, or his work for the Alliance. He’s a stranger to her, a spy, and that gives her every reason to doubt him, to refuse him even a fragment of her, likely, fragile trust.

The ghosts, ever-present in the back of his mind, suddenly slip forward.

_“Trust is a gift, Cassian,” Wada says. “You have much of it. And a gut that will not lead you wrong, if you couple the two together. You should trust yourself.”_

Cassian thinks of how he’d just asked Jyn to trust him.

_“You will make new friends, new comrades-in-arms, where sometimes trust is the only currency that matters. Trust, and empathy, and a drive for goodness.”_

His eyes flicker down, and he looks at the gray scarf.

 _“I think I trust you,” says thirteen-year-old Taraja on Mantooine, and eleven-year-old Cassian thinks he trusts her, too_.

He wonders when the last time was that he’d offered someone else his trust, unconditionally, and entirely because he believed it was the right thing to do, that it was necessary.

Wada had believed in Cassian’s ability to trust. He’d frequently cited it as one of his favorite things about Cassian.

Taraja, as a child soldier on Mantooine, had trusted Cassian, a child soldier from Fest, even when she didn’t have to, even when him being Festian should’ve been enough to make her distrust him; she trusted him because she saw that they were the same. She trusted him because she empathized with him, and he did with her.

He wonders what happened to his empathy.

He knows any goodness he might have had as a child has long been stamped out by the unwavering cruelty that has defined his adulthood.

Cassian looks at Jyn, and nods. He doesn’t take the blaster.

He turns, puts his back to her, and walks into the cockpit. He clambers into the pilot’s seat, as K-2SO turns, disbelieving, to him.

“You’re letting her _keep it?_ ”

Cassian shoots K-2SO a look, but says nothing, only pulling the seat buckles over his shoulders.

“Would you like to know the probability of her using it against you?” K-2SO asks.

Cassian ignores him.

“It’s high,” K-2SO says.

“Let’s get going,” Cassian insists.

“It’s _very high_.”

Cassian knows it is. That’s the point; he’s offering Jyn Erso his trust, and showing her that he trusts her, by letting her have the blaster, by keeping his back exposed to her now.

She knows it, too.

It’s a language criminals speak, and Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor are criminals.

Criminals with different priorities, and different ideals; but still, criminals.

Criminals who understand the value of trust, who know it’s a currency.

But as the U-wing takes off, Cassian thinks of everyone he’s trusted, remembers his fellow rebel friends at the Royal Imperial Academy, remembers how he’d given Ethan his full trust by telling him his real name.

He remembers how that turned out.

 _“I trusted you!”_ _Ethan screams, after Cassian has killed his brother_.

Jyn Erso might trust Cassian now, but he’s going to kill her father.

Ethan tried to kill him then; it was Taraja who stopped him.

Jyn Erso will try to kill him soon; Cassian isn’t sure that K-2SO will be quick enough to save him.

He isn’t sure he’ll want him to try, like he didn’t want Taraja to then.

They take off, flying over the thick jungles of Yavin 4, the Rebel Alliance base in the Great Temple shrinking behind them.

* * *

Jyn Erso falls asleep almost as soon as they make the jump to hyperspace.

Cassian can’t blame her for it; he imagines she got very little sleep during the nights she spent in the Imperial labor camp on Wobani.

He does think she has the right idea in falling asleep. He gets out of the pilot’s chair.

“You have controls,” he tells K-2SO, and turns.

“Are you being nice to Jyn Erso because she reminds you of Taraja?”

The question makes Cassian freeze. He stands stock-still, his back to K-2SO, and deep space, the stars shooting past them.

Slowly, he turns back around. “ _What?_ ”

K-2SO glances at him. “Are you being nice to Jyn Erso because she reminds you of Taraja?”

“Why do you think she reminds me of Taraja?”

“So you _are_ being nice to her.”

“ _Kay_.”

“She’s wearing the gray scarf that belonged to Taraja Ya’qul,” K-2SO says. “You told me that was her scarf, when we were on Scipio. I remember it.”

Cassian racks his mind, and realizes that K-2SO is right. He remembers Scipio, when he and K-2SO had finally had that long-time-coming argument, wherein K-2SO had brought up Taraja’s name, from Cassian’s file, in a bid to get Cassian to _talk_ to him, to remember that they were friends. Cassian had remembered then too that Taraja had loved K-2SO, and so he’d told K-2SO about her, and had showed him the gray scarf, because he’d still carried it around with him at the time.

It’d been foolish, and silly, but Cassian had been so nostalgic during that conversation, and that scarf was all he had left of her.

“I didn’t give Jyn the scarf,” Cassian says now.

“How does she have it?”

“It’s a… It doesn’t matter. She has it.”

“Are you being nice to her because she’s wearing it?”

“Why do you think I’m being nice to her?”

K-2SO stares at him. “She’s a known criminal who wants nothing to do with the Alliance, you met her hours ago, and you’re letting her carry a blaster. You don’t even let _me_ carry a blaster, and you have known me for six years.”

Cassian swallows, looking at the floor. “That isn’t my decision.”

“So you’d let me have one if it was your choice?”

Cassian can’t meet K-2SO’s gaze, but he doesn’t want to lie to him, either. He’s always hated lying to K-2SO, even about this.

“No,” Cassian admits.

“But you let _Jyn Erso_ ,” K-2SO says, voice very obviously offended. “A criminal, convicted of _assault_ , with a long record suggesting she will likely attack you--”

He stops speaking, his eyes dimming in a bizarre way Cassian has never seen before. It concerns Cassian, and he steps back into the cockpit, staring.

“Kay? Are you all right?”

K-2SO blinks at him, his gears whirring oddly quietly.

“Cassian,” K-2SO says, and his voice is soft, so soft, and he sounds like he did when he held Taraja’s dead body in the Galactic Opera House, and it is enough to make Cassian’s breath catch. “Cassian, did I hurt you?”

Cassian closes his eyes.

His luck really has turned, if they’re doing this now, in a U-wing, on the way to Jedha, a loose cannon of a young woman sleeping in the cabin behind them.

“I…” Cassian swallows hard, opening his eyes, hoping he’s conveying to K-2SO all his apologies. “I can’t tell you, Kay. I can’t.”

“So I did.” K-2SO turns his head, staring out of the U-wing, his gears whirring with this revelation. “I shot you. Three years ago. When my memory was wiped, and you introduced yourself to me, you said you’d been shot. I was the one who shot you.”

“Kay…” Cassian sighs. “Whatever happened, happened. It’s fine. Everything is okay now.”

“I am… I am so sorry, Cassian.”

K-2SO has never apologized to Cassian for shooting him. He’d never had the opportunity; Cassian had been mostly dead for four months, and K-2SO had had his memory wiped during that time.

Cassian hadn’t known how much he wanted to hear an apology until now.

He reaches forward, and grasps K-2SO’s gray shoulder.

“I forgive you, Kay,” he says, quietly. “I’ve moved on from it. We’re okay.”

K-2SO nods, looking at Cassian’s hand on his shoulder.

“I’m going to sleep,” Cassian murmurs. “Watch the ship, okay? Wake me when we’re a half hour from Jedha.”

“Yes, Cassian.”

Cassian studies K-2SO once more. He can tell the droid is shaken by this revelation, expects that K-2SO is reviewing every interaction, every conversation he’s ever had with Cassian that he can remember, every sharp and distrustful look from Draven, every blank spot in Alliance records he has been banned from seeing. He wishes there was something else he could say to help, to tell K-2SO that he really does trust him again.

Part of him is terrified that he doesn’t _actually_ trust K-2SO.

He just can’t separate the image of K-2SO with a blaster from the memory of K-2SO raising that blaster on Iego, and sending three bolts of light into Cassian’s chest.

It’s one of Cassian’s very worst memories, and that’s really saying something.

“You’re my friend, Kay,” Cassian says. “Whatever you… We’re friends. All I ever wanted you to be was my friend. To be good. And you have been. I don’t doubt you; please don’t doubt that. Please _believe_ me.”

K-2SO says nothing.

Cassian expects he won’t say anything for a while.

So Cassian turns, and goes into the cabin, leaving K-2SO at the controls.

Jyn Erso is fast asleep, face pressed against the wall. He moves past her, to the opposite corner, and curls up under Wada’s old blue parka.

The last thing he sees before his eyes close is Taraja’s gray scarf.

* * *

As ordered, K-2SO wakes Cassian up when they’re a half hour to Jedha.

Cassian’s sleep had been fitful, and messy, and colored by nightmares of Iego, of K-2SO shooting him. He’d felt the blaster shots hit him over and over again, felt himself fall over the edge of the valley.

He saw that soft, warm white light again.

He wakes to K-2SO’s gray hand gently shaking his shoulder, and an unknown voice in his head.

“ _Have a little faith. Just a little. At least once more._ ”

It’s similar to what Alkmene had said to him on Corulag, but not entirely correct.

Jyn Erso is still asleep.

Cassian follows K-2SO back into the cockpit.

K-2SO barely speaks to him, only acknowledging Cassian’s orders and instruction as Jedha looms over them, dusty and orange. Cassian is shocked at the change in the planet’s appearance; it is somehow lesser than it was the last time he’d seen it, paler, more decrepit. And the fact that this change is noticeable from space is astonishing, and unnerving.

“We’re coming into orbit,” Cassian murmurs. “You have controls.”

K-2SO doesn’t respond. He didn’t expect him to.

Cassian gets out of the pilot’s chair, and goes to the cabin to wake Jyn Erso, only to find she’s already awake, blinking at Jedha.

He looks out the window with her for a moment.

“That’s Jedha,” he says. “Or, what’s left of it.”

Jyn nods, keeping her eyes tight to the moon below.

“We find Saw, we find your father,” Cassian reminds her.

It is a reminder he needs, as well.

He looks at Jyn Erso, her big green eyes, Taraja’s gray scarf looped around her neck.

He looks past her, at K-2SO, sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, his back to Cassian.

He thinks of trust, and memory, and things that cannot be fixed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MEMENTO MORI, meaning: an object serving as a reminder, or warning, of death. Taraja’s scarf is a Memento Mori, as is, arguably, Wada’s parka, and K-2SO himself. 
> 
> MEMENTO MORI, translated more literally, means: “Remember that you must die.”
> 
> All the dialogue you’ve never heard before, or scenes you don’t recognize, was made up by me, in my interpretation of how the events of ROGUE ONE played out beyond what the movie shows us. I borrowed background details from the novelization by Alexander Freed (and I clarify which details these are) and included quotes from the film, but I do not include dialogue quotes or extra scenes from the novel.


	44. Kindred Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-six years old, and on Jedha for the second time in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes direct quotes from ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

Cassian is twenty-six years old, and on Jedha for the second time in his life.

“What’s with the Star Destroyer?” Jyn asks.

Cassian and Jyn are crouched on a rocky ridge below the Holy City of Jedha, surveying the mesa the city rests on from a safe distance. Cassian isn’t entirely sure what Jyn is doing next to him; he’s busy looking at the city through his quadnocs, taking in the monolithic white Star Destroyer hovering directly above the city, like a smothering blanket.

“It’s because of your old friend, Saw Gerrera,” he replies. “He’s started attacking their cargo shipments.”

“What are they bringing in?”

Cassian lowers the quadnocs, passing them to Jyn.

He chooses his next words carefully, because he has a memory that is almost alarmingly similar to this scene, wherein he was watching Imperial movements on a desert planet, from a place he wasn’t supposed to be, with a girl he’d chosen to trust by his side.

_“It’s not what they are bringing in,” says Taraja, grimly. “It’s what they are taking out.”_

“It’s what they are taking out,” he tells Jyn now.

He straightens, rolling his shoulders back. That memory could overwhelm him, if he lets it.

He needs to focus.

“Kyber crystal,” he clarifies. “All they can get. We wondered why they were stripping the Temple, now we know. It’s the fuel for the weapon.”

Jyn lowers the quadnocs, face carefully blank.

“It’s the weapon your father’s building,” K-2SO says, coming up from the ship behind them.

Cassian looks over at K-2SO. The droid has been remarkably cool towards him since their last conversation in the U-wing, when that devastating three-year-old secret about Iego and K-2SO’s memory wipe had finally come out. Cassian has no idea what K-2SO thinks about it, or him, now.

K-2SO reminding Jyn of her father’s devastating work suggests that he’s angry, and trying to find a place to put his anger, since he can’t exactly get mad at Cassian, not when the thing he’s angry about is how he’d almost killed him three years ago.

Jyn rises to the bait, her lips twisting. “Maybe we should leave _target practice_ here behind.”

K-2SO seems almost taken aback by her snarky response, though Cassian thinks he should’ve seen it coming. “Are you talking about me?”

“She’s right, Kay,” Cassian says, eyeing K-2SO from where he’s still crouched on the dusty ground, going over the items in his bag. “We need to blend in. Stay with the ship.”

“I can blend in! I’m an Imperial droid. This city’s under Imperial occupation.”

Cassian raises his eyebrows, staring. It’s been a long time since K-2SO has argued with him over staying with the ship. He feels like the last time would’ve been before Iego, before K-2SO had been reset by the Corellian Resistance, made more pliant and obedient…

Maybe K-2SO can get mad at him after all.

“Half the people here want to reprogram you,” Jyn says, a hard edge to her voice; K-2SO’s words about her father have cut her. “The other half want to put a hole in your head.”

“I’m surprised you’re so concerned about my safety,” K-2SO replies.

“I’m not,” Jyn says, getting to her feet and walking over to K-2SO. “I’m just worried they might miss you, and hit me.”

And with that, she shoves her bag into K-2SO’s arms. He catches it instinctively.

Cassian gets to his feet, tossing his own bag over his shoulder. He gives K-2SO a smile as he passes, as if to say, _Well, what did you expect? She’s the criminal you’ve been complaining about since you first saw her_.

He does clap K-2SO on the chest, a last reminder that Cassian is, ostensibly, on his team.

At the very least, it’s a simple gesture of affection, another reminder that Cassian is K-2SO’s friend, still, in spite of everything.

He follows after Jyn Erso, not waiting to hear whatever snide response K-2SO might have to say.

* * *

“Your droid is a delight,” Jyn says, as they follow the thick crowds through the gates of the Holy City.

“He’s always been a bit much,” Cassian says, which is the closest he will ever come to apologizing for K-2SO.

“How long has he been with you?”

“Six years.”

Jyn’s eyebrows rise. “Quite a while.”

“Yes,” Cassian says, because he agrees with her, it _is_ a while, especially for rebels like him, who have a shorter life expectancy than most. Cassian is twenty-six years old; K-2SO has been around for over a fourth of his life already, even if K-2SO himself only remembers half of that time.

“Why do you keep him?”

Cassian frowns at her. “He’s a reprogrammed Imperial droid. He’s useful.”

“If you say so. He seems too obnoxious to be worth it. Or is it just me? Is he more polite to everyone else?” Jyn glances at him as she speaks, and he watches as she carefully pulls Taraja’s gray scarf over her head, covering her hair, wearing it exactly like Taraja had once upon a time.

“No, he’s like this with everyone,” Cassian says, distantly aware that he’s staring.

“Including you? And your girlfriend?” She asks, neatly arranging the edges of the scarf around her face.

“Kay loved her, but he was still--”

But he stops speaking, slamming his mouth shut, because Jyn doesn’t know about Taraja. That can’t have been who she was talking about.

Jyn stares at him, looking surprised that he actually answered her.

“I…” Cassian pauses, and tries to pull himself together. “Who are you talking about?”

“Uh, that woman I saw you with on base. Who are _you_ talking about?”

He remembers then that Jyn had seen Shara, when they’d gone to find Jyn in the surplus room.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he says.

“Okay,” Jyn says. “But that wasn’t who you were talking about when you said ‘Kay loved her’.”

Cassian swallows, unable to look away from Jyn, and that damned scarf, but they’re through the city gates and they have an important mission ahead of them, and he just doesn’t have time for sentimentality and that old aching longing.

“Keep your head down,” he says, forcing his eyes away from her, and towards the crowds, the throng of people milling about the streets of the Holy City, the Imperial stormtroopers marching down the streets in packs. The crowds are swelling. “We don’t need the Empire to realize you’re here. We’re only here to find Saw Gerrera, and to get him to see you. We aren’t here to cause a riot.”

Jyn scowls. “I can take care of myself.”

“I believe you. But I need you to get to Saw, and I’d rather not have to break into an Imperial holding cell.”

Jyn looks at him, and opens her mouth, but she’s distracted by a man with a scarred face who almost knocks her over.

Cassian sees her turn, spots a flicker of that fire in her eyes, and moves quickly, wrapping his arm around her waist and stopping her.

“Hey!” The scarred man scowls. “You just watch yourself!”

“No, no,” Cassian says quickly, and he’s speaking to both the scarred man and Jyn, as the scarred man’s tusked companion grunts something. “We don’t want any trouble. Sorry.”

_What did I_ just _tell you_ , he thinks, tugging Jyn into his side and all but carrying her away down the street.

She looks up at him, and Cassian can see her fury, can tell she’s about to curse him out, and speaks quickly, backing away from her, returning her space.

“I had a contact,” he says. “One of Saw’s rebels, but he’s just gone missing.”

Tivik never made it back to his ship in the Ring of Kafrene, never made it back to Jedha. Cassian is the only one who knows why, knows that he’s dead.

“His sister will be looking for him,” Cassian says.

Because he’d seen Tela and Tivik together three years ago, seen their bond, and he knows that if Tela is still alive, and still a Partisan for Saw Gerrera, that she’ll be looking for her brother, wondering what has happened to him, maybe assuming he’s taken a later transport back to Jedha.

“The Temple’s been destroyed,” Cassian says. “But she’ll be there, waiting.”

He hears Tela’s voice in his head, from three years ago: _“Still, the Temple is a good, obvious place for a meet-up spot if you’re looking for someone; that’s where we go to wait for others, anyway.”_

“We’ll give her your name, and hope that gets us a meeting with Saw,” he finishes.

Jyn slows her pace, eyebrows rising. “ _Hope?_ ”

She sounds disbelieving, and he turns back to her, and sees that there’s a hint of _mirth_ dancing in her eyes. She’s making fun of him.

She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand how important hope is to the Alliance, and to Cassian personally. Hope is the thing that has gotten him through the years, has kept him alive, has made him believe that everything he’s done, every atrocity, every barbaric act, has been worth it, and justifiable.

Hope has frequently been the only thing he has left.

It has come to define the people he’s loved the most.

Cassian moves closer to Jyn, invading her space, and glaring down at her. “Yes. Rebellions are _built_ on hope.”

She looks a little alarmed by the ferocity in his voice, and turns her eyes away from his glare, glancing down a side alley.

Cassian has already started walking again, and Jyn scurries to catch up with him.

“Is this all because of your missing pilot?” She asks, undoubtedly referring to the stormtroopers and Imperial Walkers crawling around the Holy City.

Cassian doesn’t answer her question, because he isn’t entirely sure.

He hadn’t realized that the Empire had even become aware that they had a defecting pilot. Tivik had told him about the pilot being picked up by the Partisans about two days previously, so he guesses it’s been long enough for the Empire to realize that something has happened to this one pilot who flies the Jedha run. If all these stormtroopers and Imperial Walkers are in Jedha to look for the pilot, then it only ups the stakes, suggests that this pilot is the real deal.

Unless these stormtroopers are always here, because of Gerrera and the Partisans’ efforts to curb the Empire’s kyber crystal mining.

He and Jyn continue through the streets, moving further into the Holy City, until Cassian realizes he knows exactly where they are. They’re very near Gesh’s Tapcafe, the very place where he first met Tivik and Tela, three years before.

He scans the street ahead of them, and spots the tapcafe, and, to his surprise and satisfaction, recognizes Gesh himself loitering in front of it, smoking a cigarette.

“Wait for me,” Cassian says to Jyn, and without giving her a chance to complain, heads over to Gesh.

The tapcafe owner eyes Cassian as he approaches.

“Hello,” Cassian says, keeping his voice lowered. “I’m looking for Tela; she works here, or at least, she used to. Do you remember her?”

Gesh only looks at Cassian, eyes flickering all around Cassian’s head. “I never forget a face. I remember you. The last time you were here, you were looking for her brother.”

“That’s right.”

“Hm,” Gesh breathes, bringing his cigarette to his lips and inhaling. “What do you want with Tela now?”

“It’s about her brother,” Cassian says, and it’s only half a lie. “I need to speak to her. Urgently.”

Gesh still looks unconvinced, but lets it go.

“She doesn’t work for me anymore,” he says. “She’s taken up with the Partisans full-time. Foolish girl. The Partisans are running out of time.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re here,” Gesh says, gesturing around. “You see how the stormtroopers troll the streets, frightening everyone they encounter, demanding scandocs, or bribery from those who cannot comply. They’ve been coming here in greater and greater numbers, ever since the Partisans decided that Jedha was worth their efforts. Until this morning, that is.”

“What happened this morning?”

Gesh shrugs. “The Imperial ships stopped bringing stormtroopers into Jedha. Now, they take them out.”

Cassian stares. If the Empire is conducting a manhunt for the missing cargo pilot, then it stands to reason they’d want all the stormtroopers on the ground, all the eyes they can get. Why would they recall them from Jedha now?

He looks around him, and realizes now how quickly most of the people in the street are moving, how children are being ushered away, grasping tight to their parents’ hands.

He’s seen this before. He grew up knowing why people move like this, until it was an instinct.

It’s Fulcra, moments before a bombing.

“Something’s coming,” Gesh says, somewhat unnecessarily. “You’d better find Tela quick.”

“I think you’re right,” Cassian murmurs.

Without so much as a farewell, he turns, and goes back to Jyn.

She isn’t where he left her. Rather, she’s in conversation with a man in long dark robes, a uniform Cassian remembers Tela telling him signifies a Guardian of the Temple.

They don’t have _time_ for this.

“Jyn,” Cassian hisses. “Come on.”

She turns and sees him, and with one last glance at the Guardian, who Cassian realizes now is blind, begins to walk to Cassian.

The Guardian’s voice calls behind her.

“The strongest stars have hearts of kyber!”

The words seem to mean something to Jyn. She stills, eyes widening slightly, and Cassian can see the question forming in her mouth.

They don’t have _time_ for this.

“Jyn,” he snaps. “Let’s go.”

It’s enough. Jyn walks away from the Guardian, and Cassian puts his hand on her back, guiding her down the street with him.

“We’re not here to make friends,” he tells her.

“Who are they?”

“The Guardians of the Whills,” Cassian says, and he sounds just as dismissive as Tela had been, when he’d asked her three years ago. “Protectors of the kyber Temple. But there’s nothing left to protect, so they’re just causing trouble for everybody.”

He’s extrapolating; he doesn’t know for sure. But Tela had described the Guardians as con men, guarding a building of shiny rock, and Cassian imagines that the Guardians have only gotten more assertive, more aggressive, since they don’t even have that building of shiny rock to guard anymore.

Cassian begins to walk more quickly, and Jyn works to keep up.

“You seem awfully tense all of a sudden,” she notes, and he wonders if she’s making fun of him again.

Cassian shakes his head, looking from side to side as they walk.

“We have to hurry,” he murmurs. “This town; it’s ready to blow.”

Jyn glances at him, and she must see the tightness in his eyes, hear the anxiety lacing his breath, because she moves more quickly, and steps closer to him.

* * *

Cassian only has a vague understanding of where the Temple is, and doesn’t really want to go there, not with the Empire crawling through the Holy City as it is. But Gesh had said that Tela is with the Partisans, and as far as Cassian is aware she’ll be looking for Tivik, and he doesn’t know where else to begin to look for her.

He’s getting desperate.

He senses that they’re running out of time.

He and Jyn climb tall staircases, and duck down long alleys, shoving through the crowds. Jyn holds her own against the humans and creatures who push past her, and she doesn’t try to fight any of them, for which Cassian is grateful. She does have a pained, pensive look on her face though, like something is bothering her, though what it is, he can’t begin to guess.

He doesn’t think it’s the precarity of the Holy City; Jyn used to fight with the Partisans. She should be used to moving through a hotly contested space.

She stays close to his side, copying his movements.

They step out of an alley, emerging on the outside of some kind of plaza, an open space that is at the moment dominated by an Imperial assault tank. Stormtroopers are walking alongside it, shoving unaware Jedhans out of the way with enthusiasm. The tank is noisy, rumbling over the loose dirt of the street, clanking a disjointed rhythm. Imperial propaganda is being projected from somewhere nearby, adding to the depressing soundtrack.

Cassian’s apprehension grows, his gut tightening.

He has a bad feeling about this.

Jyn’s on the same page. “Tell me you have a backup plan.”

He doesn’t. He really doesn’t.

He’s saved from admitting as much by the grenade that’s thrown onto the street.

The air is suddenly filled with the sight and sound of blaster fire, and Jyn and Cassian move.

They duck to the ground, running past people who Cassian had assumed were civilians, but realizes now are actually guerilla fighters hiding in plain sight, disguising themselves to blend in like the rebels of Fest do. They reveal blasters and grenades, and barely pause to lock in on an Imperial target, a stormtrooper or the assault tank, before attacking with righteous fury.

Cassian and Jyn dive into a side alley for cover. He pulls out his blaster, while Jyn does the same, tucking the pistol she’d stolen from him close to her chest.

“Looks like we found Saw’s rebels,” she says, smiling a little.

She isn’t wrong, but trying to talk to the Partisans while they’re engaged in a firefight with Imperial troops isn’t a good idea.

Cassian looks around, trying to find an escape route, and barely catches sight of Jyn darting out from her safe spot.

“Jyn!” He yells, but she ignores him, and he watches as she jumps down a small set of stairs, and dives for a little girl, crying in the street, totally exposed.

He can only watch, heart in his throat, as Jyn scoops up the girl, twisting down, just barely avoiding bright red laser fire soaring past her head, hitting the building behind her and sending stone and shrapnel plummeting around her. Jyn leans over the girl, covering the girl’s head, as gray ash flutters into her hair.

A woman comes running from around the corner, and Cassian watches her grab the girl from Jyn. Jyn remains crouched in the dirt, looking around.

Cassian forces his eyes away, and sees the tank turn, pointing its gun towards the building behind Jyn.

“Get out of there!” He yells, moving out of his own safe spot, waving his arm at her.

He thinks she hears his warning because she moves, making a run for the assault tank, and crouching near its treads, raising her pistol again.

Cassian looks up, and sees a rebel running along the ledge of a building opposite him, sees the grenade in the rebel’s hand, watches as the rebel pulls his arm back, preparing to launch it at the tank.

To launch it at Jyn.

Without hesitation, Cassian raises his blaster and shoots the rebel.

The rebel falls to the street below, the grenade detonating, sending a small vendor’s stand erupting into flame, killing a handful of others who’d been using it for cover. Sparks and ash rain down around them, showering Jyn and the tank.

But as the smoke clears, he looks back, and sees her staring at him, and she’s still alive.

The gratitude is clear in her face.

He nods, smiling a little.

She runs straight to him.

They only make it a few more paces before Jyn suddenly dives in front of him, jumping up a little to wrap her arm around his neck, and yanks him down, to the dirty Jedha street. She presses the inside of her arm to the back of his head, shoving his face into the dirt, as another whistling noise explodes the building behind them, sending bits of gravel and plaster pouring down around them.

He looks up, blinking through the smoke, and seizes Jyn’s arm.

“Come on,” he grunts, and she doesn’t argue, but follows his lead, and they run.

He’s saved her life, and she’s saved his; they’re equals.

They’re separated again just past the plaza, when Jyn sequesters herself into an archway and Cassian keeps going. He shoots one stormtrooper but only takes a step forward before more come from around the corner, and begin firing at him.

Without cover, he turns around, and runs back to Jyn.

“This way!” He yells at her as he passes.

“ _Cassian_ ,” Jyn calls, and he thinks, wildly, that it’s the first time she’s said his name.

He turns back to her, blaster raised, just in time to see her hit a stormtrooper with her truncheon.

He knows she got it from base on Yavin, though it was likely taken without express permission. He can only stare as she swings it through the air fluidly, landing hit after hit on stormtrooper after stormtrooper. She moves instinctively, and decisively, with a refined fighting style, one that would’ve taken hours and hours of instruction to perfect.

Taraja’s gray scarf swings as she moves, and the sight is so familiar, so breathtakingly close to that part of him that died with Taraja, that Cassian lowers his blaster, and stares.

Jyn could probably shoot him then, and he wouldn’t even care.

This is perhaps why he doesn’t react when Jyn spins, and shoots K-2SO.

It is a KX-series security droid, and Cassian stares as it trembles, its circuits wheezing, before flickering out entirely, and keeling over.

He doesn’t have time to be shocked, because another KX-series security droid walks from behind the other, and stares at Jyn.

“Did you know that wasn’t me?” It asks, and Cassian would recognize that scornful voice anywhere.

Jyn’s eyes, huge with alarm, close as she breathes, nodding her head. “‘Course.”

Cassian exhales, letting himself relax somewhat. “I thought I told you to stay with the ship.”

Because K-2SO _is_ here, and that’s against a direct order from Cassian. It is very unlike the droid, and Cassian can only assume this defiant streak is a result of their last conversation, that K-2SO has decided he needs to make it up to Cassian, by doing something brave, and, in Cassian’s eyes at least, stupid.

“You did,” K-2SO acknowledges. “But I thought it was boring, and you were in trouble. There are a lot of explosions for two people _blending in_.”

He walks past Jyn as he speaks, catching a grenade thrown by a stormtrooper, and turns back to face the two humans, the blinking grenade still clutched in his fist. He tosses it back effortlessly before it can detonate, and it explodes in the faces of an incoming squad.

“You’re right,” he says, walking back past Jyn, who’s staring at him in open astonishment. “I should just stay on the ship.”

“What do we do now?” Jyn asks Cassian, ignoring K-2SO.

Cassian sighs, pushing the hair out of his eyes. The adrenaline is starting to fade, and he’s exhausted.

“First, we need to get out of this district,” he says. “The Empire knows some of Saw’s people are here, and they’ll send more stormtroopers, and Walkers. We don’t want to get caught up with that.”

“Yes, Cassian,” K-2SO says brightly.

Jyn scowls at K-2SO, but doesn’t argue.

The three of them set off, running away from the demolished plaza. K-2SO clunks along behind the humans, and Cassian wishes more than ever that he could actually read K-2SO, and get an idea of what the droid is thinking just by his facial expressions. This isn’t possible, has never been possible, but the fact that K-2SO is openly ignoring his direction now is strange, and a little unsettling.

He doesn’t know where it’s going to lead.

* * *

As it turns out, it leads to K-2SO, who has never been able to lie, who has never been comfortable around Imperials, stammering at a stormtrooper, and getting Cassian and Jyn arrested.

Although, if Cassian is being fair, it isn’t K-2SO’s fault, not entirely. He and Jyn basically ran into an open plaza filled with stormtroopers.

He can definitely blame K-2SO for the slap though.

His cheek aches, hurting with the sharp red mark from the sting of K-2SO’s hit, his idea of improvisation. K-2SO has _never_ hit him before, has only ever been kind to him, save, of course, for Iego.

K-2SO’s hit now was not gentle.

He’s definitely still angry about the truth about Iego, and he’s definitely at least partially furious with Cassian for not telling him the truth for so long.

“Quiet!” K-2SO hisses. “And there’s a fresh one if you mouth off again.”

Cassian is too shocked to respond.

“We’ll take them from here,” the stormtrooper says.

The next few moments are filled with all of them speaking. Cassian tries to tell K-2SO to let him and Jyn go and find them later, while Jyn tries to protest that this is all a big misunderstanding, and K-2SO babbles his distress, causing the stormtrooper to suggest he needs his diagnostics checked, which, unsurprisingly, offends K-2SO more than anything else.

Cassian and Jyn are being tugged away, hands cuffed, and all Cassian can think is how he’s failed. Failed the Alliance, failed Jyn, and failed K-2SO, in a more roundabout way. They will never find Saw Gerrera, or the Imperial pilot, or this all-important message from Galen Erso, the proof of the planet killing weapon.

The squabbling all stops at a new voice.

“Let them pass in peace.”

They all turn, and Cassian recognizes the Guardian that Jyn was speaking to earlier. He’s on his feet, making his way down to the ground, a long staff in his hand.

“Let them pass in peace,” he repeats, as if he has any authority here.

Cassian stares at the Guardian, who continues his walk unafraid, ignoring the stormtroopers’ demands that he stop. The Guardian’s head is raised high, his sightless eyes calm, and he keeps moving, even as he’s surrounded by stormtroopers, with their blasters drawn.

In the next instant, he’s unstoppable.

Whereas Jyn’s fighting style was slow and steady, the Guardian fights like he’s a whisp of wind. He leaps and turns, moving like a dancer, graceful and dignified. He brandishes his staff like it’s an extension of himself, using it to disarm and distract, buying himself time. He fights like no one Cassian has ever seen before.

He fights with a fluidity Cassian has only ever heard described, in old stories of the jedi.

He stares, Jyn similarly stunned next to him.

The Guardian takes down all the stormtroopers in the area, but doesn’t have time to celebrate, as a whole other squadron comes pounding around the corner.

They are taken down even more quickly, by a series of spectacularly aimed blaster shots.

These shots come from a second man, who looks almost like the inverse of the first. His hair is longer, wilder, and he’s dressed in tan, a contrast to the Guardian’s darker colors. He carries a repeating cannon, cradling it in his arms, and walks towards the Guardian, calmly stepping around dead stormtroopers.

“You almost _shot_ me,” the Guardian says, affronted.

“You’re welcome,” the second man replies, in a tired sort of voice. He lifts the cannon and shoots a surviving stormtrooper without hesitation.

K-2SO straightens, moving back into the open space. “Clear of hostiles.”

But the second man spins, lifting his cannon again, leveling it at K-2SO.

“One hostile,” K-2SO cries.

Before Cassian can say anything, Jyn races out to stand in front of K-2SO, placing herself in between him and certain death. It is a brave, selfless move that Cassian has not seen frequently in his life.

“He’s with us,” she gasps.

“They’re all right,” the Guardian agrees.

Cassian follows Jyn out, and K-2SO frees them.

“Cassian,” K-2SO murmurs. “I’m sorry about the slap.”

He does sound sorry, voice low, eyes blinking slowly. But Cassian is too overwhelmed, too busy trying to process everything that has just happened, to respond reassuringly. He also might still be a little pissed off at K-2SO for it, too.

“Go back to the ship,” he snaps. “Wait for my call.”

K-2SO shuffles away, sufficiently cowed, obedient again.

Cassian turns back, looking at the Guardian, who’s crouched on the ground, oddly relaxed.

Cassian thinks of Jeseej, of Alkmene, of the Force, all beings and things he does not understand.

He thinks of his father, who hated the jedi.

“Is he jedi?” He asks, hating the uncertainty in his voice, thinking it an old childhood fear, and not entirely sure who he’s posing the question to. Maybe the universe itself.

“There are no jedi anymore,” the second man says dismissively. “Only dreamers, like this fool.”

“The Force _did_ protect me,” the Guardian insists.

The second man stares at him. “ _I_ protected you.”

Cassian feels dread settle in him.

_That’s exactly what this already ruined trip needs,_ he thinks. _A Force-sensitive warrior._

Luckily for him, Jyn is ready to try and salvage the mission.

“Can you get us to Saw Gerrera?” She asks.

The words act as a signal.

Cassian is forced to his knees as dark-clothed rebels emerge from seemingly nowhere, coming up from the cracks of the Holy City. They surround him and Jyn, and the Guardian and his protector, and Cassian knows exactly who they are.

They’ve found Saw’s fighters after all.

He hears the Guardian tell them that they are not on the Empire’s side, and he hears the rebel seemingly leading this group rebuke him, staring hard at Cassian.

“ _Tell that to the one who killed our men_.”

Because he’s right. Cassian had killed some of Saw’s rebels, to save Jyn.

They weren’t the first similarly-minded people, fighting on the same side as Cassian, that he has killed. He expects they won’t be the last.

(Here’s the thing: they _are_.)

But Cassian has no argument to make, no way to defend himself. He knows they won’t get it, won’t understand how he privileged the life of one woman over the lives of their friends.

He listens as Jyn tells them that she’s the daughter of Galen Erso.

It was the exact thing they were going to use to try to get in to see Saw Gerrera, and it works now.

Cassian closes his eyes as a black bag is pulled over his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter relies on more ROGUE ONE quotes than any other chapter in the story, I think. I just could not get around it, and I had to explore what the hell Cassian was thinking during all of this.
> 
> Gesh is a canon character, but very well might not have been that man Cassian talks to in Jedha in ROGUE ONE. For this story he is.
> 
> All the dialogue you’ve never heard before, or scenes you don’t recognize, was made up by me, in my interpretation of how the events of ROGUE ONE played out beyond what the movie shows us. I borrowed background details from the novelization by Alexander Freed (and I clarify which details these are) and included quotes from the film, but I do not include dialogue quotes or extra scenes from the novel.


	45. The Shape of Things to Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-six years old, and quite convinced that he’s going to die in a cell in Saw Gerrera’s headquarters on Jedha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes direct quotes from ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

Cassian is twenty-six years old, and quite convinced that he’s going to die in a cell in Saw Gerrera’s headquarters on Jedha.

He’s going to die here because he’s going to kill the Guardian, who hasn’t stopped vocally praying for five minutes now.

He’s going to die here because the Guardian’s partner is going to kill him after he kills the Guardian.

Cassian thinks he’s going to be more grateful for the silence than anything else.

He presses his face against the cold bars of the cell, and tries to think.

He doesn’t know where Jyn is; they’d been separated upon arrival in this cold and airy building, which Cassian is sure is the headquarters of the Partisans, though no one has bothered to tell him. But he looks at the scarred men and women in the rooms ahead of him, at the black paint around their eyes like Jyn’s and Tela’s, and knows he’s looking at the Partisans.

He can only hope that Jyn has been taken to meet Saw Gerrera.

He’s startled by the sound of his own name.

“Andor? Andor?”

Cassian blinks, and focuses his eyes, spotting Tela. She approaches the cell door, staring at him. She looks much the same as she did three years ago, with her muddy brown eyes and lanky hair, though she has a new scar running over her cheek.

“Tela,” he says.

“What are you doing here?”

Cassian sighs. “It is a… very long story.”

Tela shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have come here, Andor. Saw will remember you. He knows you’re Alliance. He’ll kill you.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Cassian says, and this is the truth.

Tela doesn’t look convinced, but drops the topic.

“This might sound weird, but… Have you heard from Tivik lately?”

“No,” Cassian says, schooling his expression, keeping his eyes politely interested, and confused.

Tela buys it.

“It’s just… He was in the Ring of Kafrene, and he was due back here yesterday,” she says. “But he didn’t come back, and his shipmates said he ran off to do something and just never came back. No one’s seen him since. I’m worried.”

“I’m sorry, Tela,” Cassian says quietly.

Part of him wishes she’d understand exactly what he’s apologizing for, that he isn’t just expressing sympathy for her missing brother.

“Thanks,” Tela says, voice matching his in somber tone.

“If I get out of here, I’ll keep an ear out.”

Tela smiles, but it’s shaky. “Thanks, but I don’t think you’re getting out of here.”

“You could be right,” Cassian agrees.

Tela gives him a last parting look, a thoughtful one, before turning and walking away. Cassian stares after her, hoping that thoughtful look on her face suggests she’s considering freeing him from this cell. She’d seemed to like him the last time they met.

He suddenly realizes the cell is too quiet, and that the Guardian has stopped praying.

“You should not have lied to her, Captain,” the Guardian says.

Cassian’s blood runs cold.

He turns, and is at the Guardian’s side before he knows it.

“ _What did you just say? "_

The Guardian grins, sightless blue eyes dancing with mirth. “Relax. You’re a good liar. She believed you.”

“How did you know I was lying?” Cassian demands.

“The Force shimmered around you,” the Guardian says. “I do not know why you lied; I only know that you did.” He pauses, and turns his head, sightless eyes blinking at Cassian. “You are very gray, Captain.”

Cassian sighs, stepping back. “You aren’t the first person who’s told me that.”

“No, I am not. You have quite the history written on your bones. I have always wanted to meet an Angel.”

“You can see that too, huh,” Cassian mutters, somehow unsurprised.

 _This might as well happen,_ he thinks. _Of course the blind man can see everything._

The Guardian’s partner stirs. “Angel?”

“Captain Andor has talked to several, Baze. They _saved_ him.”

“Really,” the Guardian’s partner, Baze, says, turning to look at Cassian with newfound interest.

“You’re very special,” the Guardian says to Cassian. “Not many of us can say the Angels brought us back from the dead. They saw that the Force was not willing to take you, not yet.”

Cassian doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure he has any kind of response to that.

_“Your work here is done, but you have more to do elsewhere,” the Angel says. “You are still needed.”_

He’s likely about to be killed by Saw Gerrera, so it looks like the Angel was wrong.

Baze agrees with him.

“The Partisans will kill him when they learn that he’s Alliance, Chirrut,” he tells his partner.

“Have a little faith,” the Guardian, Chirrut, says, and though he’s facing Baze, Cassian feels that he’s speaking to him, too.

_“Have a little faith, Captain. Just once more.”_

From Alkmene, so recently.

" _Have a little faith. Just a little. At least once more."_

From a place he can’t remember, but words he hears in his head, nonetheless.

Cassian returns to his spot by the cell door, leaning his face against the cool metal, and closing his eyes. He’s so tired, and Jyn still has not returned, and K-2SO likely has no idea what’s happened. Cassian has no idea how they’re going to get out of this one.

Chirrut starts up his praying again behind him.

“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.”

Cassian is no longer the only one who’s had enough; Baze speaks, laughing at Chirrut’s repeated prayers, and this is how Cassian learns that Baze used to be a devoted Guardian, too.

He doesn’t know what might’ve happened to cause Baze to lose his faith.

Cassian is someone who never really had faith to lose.

The closest thing he’s ever had to faith is his devotion to the cause, the Rebellion, and the Alliance. He’s had to put his trust in the Alliance to know what to do, to assign him to the missions that need to be completed, to accomplish the work that must be done.

At long last he remembers Wada’s old lockpick kit, stashed in his boot.

He drops to one knee, barely hears Chirrut’s voice behind him, speaking of devotion to the Force, that the Force has willed them all to be locked in this cell.

It is similar to what Alkmene had told Cassian, so recently, that the Force moves strongly around him, and that it inspired her to help him. He remembers his feelings of frustration, his disinterest in the Force, because if it is a thing that is choosing to help him, it picks very inconvenient times, often at the very last minute, allowing better people to die in his place. Cassian has never wanted better people to die, not for him.

“I’m beginning to think the Force and I have different priorities,” he tells Chirrut now, because he thinks that’s a kinder thing to say.

“Relax, Captain,” Chirrut says, still sounding almost amused at their situation. “We’ve been in worse cages than this one.”

That could be true for them, but it certainly isn’t true for Cassian. Somehow, in his two decades of work for the Rebellion, he’s never been caught. He escaped his three years at the Royal Imperial Academy without detection, made it through two years of work in Imperial Intelligence on Coruscant safely as Joreth Sward, and has visited tens of systems around the galaxy for his spy work for the Corellian Resistance, and the greater Alliance. He’s worn gray Imperial officer’s uniforms authoritatively, on Coruscant and Jenoport, with no one doubting him. He’s looked important and powerful Imperial Military men in the eye, and not flinched, but rather, gotten them to spill information and intelligence to him.

He’s a practiced liar, and a good spy. He’s sneaky, and cunning, and clever. He’s never been caught, until now, on Jedha, and not even by the Empire.

He tells Chirrut that this is a new experience for him as he stands, peering out the cell door.

“There is more than one sort of prison, Captain,” Chirrut says, still quite calm. “I sense that you carry yours wherever you go.”

Cassian stills.

He’s suddenly sixteen again, and listening to Jeseej’s wheezing laugh.

_“You are trapped! You carry your own prison with you, everywhere you go. You think the Academy is what is binding you? Think again. You live in a prison of your own making, and you will never escape it!”_

Slowly, he turns his head back to stare at Chirrut.

His expression must convey his disconcertment, for Baze looks at him too, confused at this overreaction.

Sixteen-year-old Cassian had considered those words of Jeseej’s, and come to the conclusion that he did feel a little trapped. He only had the Rebellion, his meager existence as a soldier. He’d only ever known pain, and loss, and sacrifice, and it had trapped him, forcing him to shape his identity around the parameters of the cause.

Twenty-six-year-old Cassian knows that he’s trapped. He knows that he’s locked himself inside a prison of his own making, surrounding himself with all the things he’s done, all the devastating crimes he’s committed, the murders, assassinations, torturings, thefts, and bombings.

He will never be free of any of it. He will never forget any of it. He will never be forgiven for any of it.

It’s only him, and all the terrible things he’s done.

He’ll have to reckon with it all, some day.

In the meantime, he hides in his own prison, and tries to ignore the ghosts and the gray ashes, and his own terrified screaming.

He’s always been able to keep the ghosts at bay, the memories of everyone he’s ever loved, lost to him now, and the memories of people whose words hit him, cut him deeply, but they’ve all been so loud in the last day, starting with Nerezza’s voice in his head when he looked at Jyn, and leading to now, where Chirrut himself echoes the words of people he never heard, people who haunt and bewilder Cassian.

Cassian doesn’t know what it is about this moon, or Jyn or Chirrut, that is dragging the ghosts and memories to the front of his mind now.

He looks back out of the cell, and tries to think.

* * *

The defecting pilot is _here_. In the cell next door.

Cassian leans against the barred window separating the pilot’s cell from the one he’s in with Chirrut and Baze, and studies the defecting Imperial pilot.

He looks to be close to Cassian’s own age, maybe a little younger, with brown skin darker than his own, and long, curly black hair. He’s dressed in the jumpsuit uniform of an Imperial cargo pilot, though his uniform is covered in a light layer of sand and dirt; he’s been wearing it for a while. His eyes are huge, and a deep brown, and he blinks slowly, barely able to maintain eye contact with Cassian for long. He also keeps repeating himself, this mantra of _I’m the pilot_.

Something is clearly wrong with him, but Cassian has no idea what it could be.

He has information he needs to verify first.

“Galen Erso,” he repeats. “Where is he?”

“Galen… Galen sent me,” the pilot croaks.

“I know,” Cassian says. “From where? Where did you come from? Where is Galen Erso?”

The pilot raises his eyes, and they are so watery, and Cassian realizes this man has been traumatized by something terrifying.

_The planet killer?_

“What’s your name?” Cassian asks, trying a new line of questioning.

“B… Bodhi. Rook.”

“Good,” Cassian breathes, smiling a little.

“I am Chirrut, and this is Baze,” Chirrut calls from behind Cassian, even though Bodhi cannot see them from his spot on the dirt floor of his separate cell.

Baze grunts an approximation of a greeting.

Cassian turns back to Bodhi.

“My name is Cassian Andor,” he says, almost surprising himself by offering his real name.

He hears Asori’s voice in his head: _"_ _Giving someone your real name is a sign of trust. Letting someone call you by it tells them that you are on their team. It’s priceless._ ”

He needs Bodhi to trust him, just like he needed Jyn to trust him.

Bodhi’s eyes clear somewhat, and he nods. “Hello.”

“Hello, Bodhi,” Cassian says. “I’m with the Alliance.”

Whatever good will Cassian had managed to build up with Bodhi collapses as soon as he tells him he’s with the Alliance. Bodhi’s dark eyes shutter closed, and he shakes his head, turning his gaze back to the dusty floor. Cassian stares as he raises his hands, putting them over his head, and begins to tremble, muttering to himself.

“Bodhi, _Bodhi_ ,” Cassian breathes, pressing as close to the window as possible. “Bodhi, look at me. What is it?”

“You might be too late for him, Captain,” Chirrut says, voice uncharacteristically somber. Cassian has no idea what he could be talking about.

“Please, Bodhi,” he implores.

Bodhi looks up then, and his eyes are filled with so much hatred that it startles Cassian.

“Are you… Are you like _him?_ ” He asks, his voice carrying a new hard edge.

“Who, Bodhi?”

“ _Saw Gerrera_ ,” Bodhi says, spitting the name.

Cassian freezes.

_“Why did they send you,” Saw Gerrera asks._

_“Because I’m like you,” Cassian says, quietly._

But Cassian can’t be like Saw Gerrera. Not where it counts. He _refuses_ to be.

He doesn’t abandon people, not like Saw Gerrera abandoned Jyn.

“What did he do to you, Bodhi?” Cassian asks.

“Bor Gullet,” Bodhi says, and Chirrut gasps, while Baze issues a long string of curses.

Cassian spins around to the Guardian and his protector.

“What is Bor Gullet?” He demands.

“A creature,” Chirrut says. “It can read your thoughts, determine if you are lying. But it is cruel. It tortures. It shows you… things.”

“A _monster_ ,” Baze hisses.

Cassian takes this in, nausea rolling through him.

Cassian is someone who has tortured before.

He thinks of Alfie on Jenoport, remembers Alfie’s haunted and stunned brown eyes, eyes so similar in shape and color to Bodhi Rook’s. Cassian remembers how he’d promised Alfie that he would save him, that he would get him out to see his daughter again, that he would not let him die in that Imperial prison on Jenoport.

Cassian remembers how he failed Alfie, in every possible way.

“Saw Gerrera…” Bodhi whispers. “He is not a man. He is a machine. He breathes… like a machine.”

And here Bodhi exaggerates his breathing, making it mechanical, and labored. He shudders.

It is a kind of breathing Cassian has heard before, fourteen years ago, in the Weapons Research Facility on Fest.

Apparently Saw Gerrera sounds like the dark trooper.

Cassian thinks of Gerrera, the man’s inherent superiority, his vindictiveness, his feeling of righteousness. He thinks of the dark trooper, of breath that rattles through lungs, of humanity ruined by a devotion to a cause.

_“They need more men like us,” Saw Gerrera says. “Like you and I. Men who will do what needs to be done. You understand this, yes? They need us.”_

Man, machine, and the cause, so linked, so close.

_“What are you?” Cassian asks, and he knows it’s a terribly rude thing to ask, but he’s staring at something he cannot understand, and he’s twelve years old, and twelve-year-olds usually ask that kind of unasked for thing with impunity._

_The dark trooper gives a stuttering laugh, closing his eyes for a long moment before opening them again._

_“I don’t know anymore,” the dark trooper says. “I used to… But now…”_

Cassian knows exactly who he is. He’s an assassin, a liar, a killer, a thief, a spy.

A torturer.

He knows who he is.

It’s someone he never wanted to be.

Three years ago, Cassian had wondered how many years away he was from turning into Saw Gerrera.

Now Cassian realizes, he might already be Saw Gerrera. He might already be that dark trooper on Fest.

He doesn’t want to be either of them.

He wants to be _good_.

He wonders if maybe it isn’t too late for him.

“Bodhi,” Cassian says, and his voice is sharp. It is enough to get Bodhi’s fractured attention, and the smaller man looks up at him.

Cassian stares at him, makes eye contact, tries to pour all his dedication into his gaze, to tell Bodhi how sorry he is, how he understands.

He won’t fail Bodhi. Not like he failed Alfie.

“Bodhi,” he says. “I am not going to hurt you. I am going to get you out. I am going to help you. Okay?”

Bodhi stares at him, and Cassian’s heart aches at the pure sense of _wonder_ in Bodhi’s face. This is a man who has not frequently had family at his side, or even a team, someone there ready to help him.

Not for the first time, Cassian wonders what his connection to Galen Erso is.

“We have to find Galen Erso,” Cassian says. “Where is he?”

“Eadu,” Bodhi whispers. “We’re on Eadu. The Research Facility.”

Cassian smiles, both in relief at this long-awaited answer, and in disbelief, because _of course_ he’s going to another Research Facility.

That gray and snow-covered Weapons Research Facility on Fest dances across his eyes, an image always at the back of his mind.

He’s ready to see an Imperial Research Facility fall.

“Good,” he says, nodding at Bodhi. “Good. We’re going to get out of here, Bodhi. I promise.”

Unlike with Alfie, Cassian is going to keep this promise, or die trying.

Unlike Gerrera, Cassian is not going to abandon someone.

Bodhi nods, offering Cassian a real, shaky smile. “Okay.”

Cassian turns, moving away from the window, and returning to the door of the cell. He can get this door opened, has his lockpick ready, but he needs to wait for some kind of distraction, for the Partisans to look away, to ignore him.

He gets his distraction when the floor, the whole building, the entire world, begins to shake.

* * *

Cassian runs through the trembling headquarters of the Partisans.

He needs to find Jyn.

Bodhi is with Chirrut and Baze, and Cassian trusts them to get him out. They’d seemed more sympathetic to Bodhi after the torture revelation, and what little Cassian knows of the Force suggests that leaving traumatized people inside shaking buildings is not something the Force would approve of.

Jyn is somewhere in this building, and Cassian cannot leave without her.

She trusts him, and he won’t leave her now.

_“I’m not sure you would’ve chosen differently than me, Andor,” Gerrera says._

He is better than Saw Gerrera, better than the dark trooper. He _has_ to be.

He runs up a series of stairs, shoving past fleeing Partisans, ignoring the yells and screams that echo hauntingly through the corridors. Cassian turns his head left and right as he runs, as the building continues to spasm and quake, and he knows that whatever is causing this movement cannot possibly be natural, knows that something terrible has happened.

“Jyn!” He yells as he runs, because he doesn’t know where he’s going, has never been in this building before, and has no idea where she could’ve gone. “ _Jyn!_ ”

By luck, or chance, or maybe something else entirely, he emerges at the top of the stairs, darts through an archway, and finds her.

She’s crouched on the floor, hands pressed to the dirt, and he’s never seen that look on her face before.

She looks like she’s sick, like her entire life has just been upended.

Cassian looks up and there’s Saw Gerrera.

He understands what Bodhi had meant.

Saw Gerrera is wearing some kind of body armor, complete with an oxygen mask. He’s missing a leg, has lost it sometime in the last three years, and a mechanical one is in its place.

Gerrera and Cassian both make moves towards Jyn, but stop, eyes locked on each other.

Cassian has his blaster in hand, and he’s ready.

Gerrera stares at him, and Cassian sees a flicker of recognition in his eyes, knows that he remembers who Cassian is, from their only meeting three years ago.

Cassian drops to the floor, wrapping his hand around Jyn’s arm.

“We’ve got to go,” he tells her. “I know where your father is.”

That awakens some of Jyn’s fire. She looks at him, eyes wild.

She lets him tug her to her feet.

Cassian looks over her head, and meets Gerrera’s eyes.

 _You were wrong about me_ , he thinks. _You and I are not the same. I’m making a different choice. I’m not abandoning her_.

Gerrera looks at him, and agrees.

“Go with him, Jyn,” Gerrera says. “You must go!”

“Come with us,” Jyn tries, reaching for Gerrera. But the man shakes his head.

“I will run no longer,” he says.

“There’s _no time_ ,” Cassian snaps, and pulls Jyn with him. She goes, haltingly, and then more quickly, as the building begins to fall apart completely, bits of ceiling clattering to the floor around them.

As they run, Cassian hears Gerrera’s voice, coming to them from somewhere far away.

“ _Save the Rebellion! Save the dream!_ ”

* * *

The next five minutes happen in flashes.

Cassian and Jyn run down dirt stairs, clutching for each other, dodging errant bits of debris and stone, flat-out sprinting for the exit.

Outside, K-2SO has heeded Cassian’s call, and brought the U-wing, and Chirrut and Baze are running to it.

Bodhi lingers in front of the entrance to the Partisans’ headquarters, shocked at the wall of rock and stone that has overtaken the blue sky of Jedha.

He jolts back to life when Cassian tells him to follow him, to run.

Beyond the ship, Jedha is in pieces.

Cassian doesn’t have time to look at it.

They all clamber into the U-wing, and Cassian only pauses to yank off Wada’s blue parka before he’s diving into the pilot’s chair, yelling at K-2SO to get them out.

K-2SO tries to protest, to remind Cassian of the finer aspects of flying, the proper way to go about take off and the jump to lightspeed, which Cassian finds maddening, because _the sky is falling and they need to go_.

Cassian doesn’t so much as pause to buckle up, or to put on his headset.

He knows Wada would understand.

With Jedha collapsing all around them, the earth crumbling into the sky, Cassian sends the U-wing bolting into hyperspace.

* * *

Jedha is destroyed.

By something that should not exist, but that Cassian knows now does.

The planet killer is _real_.

It is almost more than Cassian can handle.

He sits, numb, in the pilot’s chair, as K-2SO chatters next to him, complaining about how he has to catch the rest of the U-wing’s functions up to speed now that they’re careening through space, and asking Cassian what has happened, and how he’d ended up so far away from the Holy City.

Being so far from the Holy City is why Cassian is still alive.

They’re flying away from Jedha, headed back towards the center of the galaxy, headed beyond there to Yavin 4.

He needs to send a message to base before they get to the Core Worlds, and Imperial territory.

Cassian stumbles to his feet, moving to the comm unit. He tugs the headset over his head.

With trembling hands, he composes a message for Draven.

 _Weapon confirmed. Jedha destroyed. Mission target located on Eadu. Please advise_.

He knows what he wants to do, but as he sends the message, he realizes Draven won’t agree.

Cassian wants to find and interrogate Galen Erso. He wants to know the mechanics of the planet killer, how the kyber crystals power it, how it funnels that energy, how it is even capable of destroying _an entire moon_. He wants to know why Jedha was targeted. He wants to know what planets are next on the list.

He wants to know how to _destroy it_.

But Draven will likely hear Cassian’s message, and decide that Galen Erso is too much of a question mark, too unpredictable, to let live.

If he built one planet killer, who’s to say he isn’t working on a second one right now?

Cassian can picture the Empire wanting a second.

One to terrorize the Outer Rim, one to control the Inner Rim.

Cassian stands at the comm unit, and breathes.

He turns his head, and looks at the others in the U-wing.

Baze and Chirrut are sitting in the back of the ship, faces identical masks of devastation. They’re holding hands, but sitting away from each other, and speaking in that silent communication knowable only to people who have been together for decades.

Bodhi is crouched on the ledge against the wall, a dazed, drunk look on his face, eyes locked on outer space as it whips past them.

Jyn sits opposite Bodhi, green eyes staring at nothing at all.

The planet killer, the destruction of Jedha… It is too much, too much for any of them to deal with.

Jyn feels Cassian’s eyes on her, for she looks up at him, blinking slowly.

They stare at each other.

Cassian has no idea what he could possibly say.

Saw, for better or worse, _was_ her mentor. She probably loved him, in some kind of way.

Cassian remembers that hollow ache that overwhelmed him after Wada died.

He wouldn’t wish that loss on anyone, much less Jyn Erso.

His headset crackles, and he turns away, as a message comes through from Draven.

 _Orders still stand. Proceed with haste. Keep to the plan_.

Cassian swallows, and closes his eyes, aware that Jyn Erso is still watching him.

He went back for her on Jedha, because he was better than Saw. He saved her, because he knew it was a good thing to do, and he wants to be good.

But he’s still a soldier. He still follows Draven’s orders.

He’s still devoted to the Alliance.

He still believes in it.

That’s where his faith lives.

That’s where his identity, his sense of self, has always existed.

He thinks now that it’s where his identity has long been buried.

He has no faith tied to Jyn Erso, no faith tied to her father, or her father’s supposed message.

Still, he hears that unknown voice in the back of his mind.

“ _Have a little faith. Just a little. At least once more._ ”

 _I will_ , Cassian thinks.

He does have a little faith.

He’ll give it to the Alliance. Like he always has.

At least once more.

Always once more.

Cassian knows exactly who he is.

He turns back to the comm unit, and whispers, “Understood.”

He opens his eyes.

He returns the headset to the hook and stands there for a moment, letting himself breathe.

He’ll break Jyn Erso. For the Alliance.

She won’t be the first person he ruins for the cause, and he knows she won’t be the last.

He turns to K-2SO and says, “Set course for Eadu.”

From behind him, he hears Jyn call, “Eadu? Is that where my father is?”

He looks back at her, and tells her that he thinks so.

He hates the glow that shines through her green eyes.

It’s _hope_.

Hope.

Cassian is going to steal that from her.

It is not the worst thing he’s ever done.

“You’re Galen’s daughter?” Bodhi asks, and he also sounds so hopeful, and these are two sad, young people who have put their faith in Cassian.

Cassian has never deserved anyone’s faith.

He could cry thinking about it.

He listens to Jyn and Bodhi talk, and he forces himself to abandon that mindset that saved Jyn on Jedha, that promised Bodhi that he’d get out alive, that assured Bodhi he was better than Saw Gerrera.

_“You’d sacrifice your personal happiness for this cause,” Travia says. “You’d hang yourself.”_

He returns to who he really is, to Captain Cassian Andor, Alliance spy and murderer.

There is too much at stake now, with the planet killer realized. There is no time to try and redeem himself.

There is no possible way to redeem himself; there never has been, and that moment on Jedha when he thought he could was nothing but a foolish dream of the child he used to be.

He has to follow the Alliance, follow the orders of his superior officer, do his duty.

He schools his expression carefully.

He detaches himself.

It is something he’s good at.

It is the only _good_ thing he can do.

From somewhere far away, he hears his mother’s ghost, so clear she could be standing next to him.

_“You think you’re good, by fighting for the Rebellion?”_

He blinks, hard, and tries to force her away, like he always has, always did, when she was alive.

_“My brave boy… You are so good, Cassi.”_

He buries her ghost in the back of his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The Shape of Things to Come” was a novel by H.G. Wells; it is a phrase now understood to mean “the way the future is likely to develop”. As a chapter title, it foreshadows Cassian’s upcoming Big Change of Heart, as well as the Death Star destroying other worlds.
> 
> I LOVED Diego Luna’s big but understated reaction to Chirrut’s comment about Cassian being in a prison. I got the impression then that it was something Cassian had heard before, and had been shaken by, as it plays out in this story.
> 
> All the dialogue you’ve never heard before, or scenes you don’t recognize, was made up by me, in my interpretation of how the events of ROGUE ONE played out beyond what the movie shows us. I borrowed background details from the novelization by Alexander Freed (and I clarify which details these are) and included quotes from the film, but I do not include dialogue quotes or extra scenes from the novel.


	46. Metanoia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-six years old, and on his way to Eadu, to kill Galen Erso.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes direct quotes from ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

Cassian is twenty-six years old, and on his way to Eadu, to kill Galen Erso.

The flight to Eadu from Jedha is long, since Eadu is all the way on the other side of the galaxy. Cassian sits in the pilot’s chair of the U-wing, and tries to doze, tries to convince his mind to quiet down so his body can get some much needed rest.

It isn’t working much.

The horror of Jedha still weighs on him.

He can see the destruction whenever he closes his eyes. He can see the wall of earth and stone shooting into the sky, as the land falls away. He can see the Partisans running for their ships, running for any chance to escape the moon alive.

He can imagine all the people in the Holy City, who never even had a chance.

Thousands of lives, gone in an instant.

And thousands more, who lived for a few minutes longer, just long enough to see their deaths racing to them, but unable to stop it, or escape.

Killed by the Death Star.

It is not a fate Cassian can imagine.

(It is the one he will have.)

He’s glad to have a name for the planet killer; it makes it both more and less foreboding. Less, because it is now a thing he can name, can maybe know. More, because it is not a name that inspires much hope, that makes him think he can defeat it.

Jyn has no idea of the shape or scale of the thing; her father had not mentioned it in the hologram message she’d watched, and no one in the U-wing had gotten to catch a glimpse of it on their flight from Jedha. Bodhi doesn’t even know what it actually looks like; the Research Facility only exists to refine the kyber for the Death Star, to then be transported from Eadu to wherever the Death Star is located, a cargo run Bodhi has never been assigned to.

Cassian turns his head, and looks back into the main cabin.

Baze and Chirrut are asleep, leaning on each other, heads lolling against the other’s. They are still holding hands, still trying to draw any comfort they can, with the loss of their home so fresh. Cassian has no idea what they plan to do next, but he doesn’t mind shuttling them to Eadu, and from there to Alliance headquarters on Yavin 4. He doesn’t think they’re any kind of security risk; they clearly have never supported the Empire, and he imagines they are even more against it now.

Jyn is also asleep, her nose tucked into the edge of Taraja’s scarf.

Cassian cannot look at her for long without his melancholy returning.

He’s also a bit furious with her.

He understands that she’d been in a state of shock, to see her father again after so long. But she still should’ve grabbed for his message, carried it with her from Jedha. She’d had time. She could’ve taken it. They could’ve had first-person testimony from Galen Erso right this minute, that Cassian could’ve watched and reviewed and brought to the Alliance, for Alliance leaders to see for themselves.

But they don’t have that, and now the Alliance isn’t going to believe this rumor of a flaw in the Death Star.

And Cassian has been ordered to kill Galen Erso, and he’s going to, and this information might die with Galen Erso, lost from the Alliance.

It doesn’t matter that Cassian believes Jyn’s tale. It doesn’t matter that he trusts her, had seen the bold truth in her face as she reiterated her father’s message.

Cassian is not the one who orders and plans missions, is not the one who organizes troops, is not the one who outlines strategy. He can’t tell the Alliance that they need to go to Scarif, to find the Death Star plans that may or may not exist. He’s a single soldier in the Alliance. He isn’t worth much; there are a dozen of him. He’s entirely replaceable.

They needed that message, and now it’s gone, and Galen Erso is going to die, and they’re going to have to look elsewhere for that intelligence.

Cassian turns away from Jyn, and looks at Bodhi instead.

Bodhi is awake, though blinking slowly, suggesting he’s liable to nod off at any moment. He sits close to Jyn, sharing the bench seat, but keeping an arm’s length of distance between them. Cassian had overheard them talking about Galen Erso, sharing and comparing memories. He understands the inclination to do it, to reminisce over someone you loved, but hearing their warm words had sent ice into his chest.

They have no idea what’s coming.

Some of Bodhi’s earlier words reverberate inside Cassian’s mind, fighting to get out.

“ _He said… He said I could get right by myself. He said I could make it right, if I was brave enough, and listened to what was in my heart._ ”

The words sting Cassian, because he understands that instinct, that desperate desire.

“It isn’t too late,” Jyn had said.

And it might not be too late for Bodhi.

But it is too late for Cassian.

There is no possible way for Cassian to “get right”, no possible way for him to atone for all the horrible crimes he’s committed, the lives he’s ended. Galen Erso will just become another hole in his heart, another grim and sobering anecdote in Cassian’s long Alliance record.

He’s okay with that.

He _has to be_.

But there is something so lost in Bodhi’s eyes still, and Cassian knows he has not recovered from the Bor Gullet, and so Cassian slides out of the pilot’s chair, and moves to crouch in front of Bodhi in the cabin.

“You okay?” He asks, softly, aware of the other sleeping passengers.

Bodhi blinks at him. “Uh, yeah. Yeah.”

Cassian’s lips twist. “It’s perfectly fine not to be. You’ve been through a lot. Especially in the last few days.”

“Yeah,” Bodhi says, because he could not possibly disagree. “I, uh. Sleeping. I’m… I’m not sure what I’m going to see.”

“In your dreams?”

“Memories,” Bodhi clarifies. “Bor Gullet, it… It showed me memories.”

“Sometimes those are worse than the dreams,” Cassian says, thinking of how much louder his ghosts have been lately.

Bodhi nods in agreement.

He looks so small, sitting there in his Imperial jumpsuit, and Cassian is overwhelmed with sympathy.

“When I was sixteen,” Cassian says, “I met a sljee called Jeseej. He was psychic; force-sensitive. He took my hand.” And here, Cassian rolls up the sleeve of his jacket, and uses his other hand to demonstrate where Jeseej’s antennae had grasped his hand. “He looked into my mind, and he told me… all kinds of things. He saw my past, and my future. He saw my death.”

_“I see it, but it is… confusing. It’s very gray. You are killed by a moon.”_

He still can make neither head nor tail of what this might actually mean; he still does not believe he’ll actually be killed by a moon.

(He won’t. He will be killed by something far more malicious.)

(And very soon.)

Cassian looks up at Bodhi, meeting the younger man’s dark eyes. “The whole thing was extremely invasive. The psychic, he… He was looking at things he should never have been able to see, or allowed to see. And I could not stop him. We had a deal, and his terms were to know my future. I agreed, because I wanted his information. I am not convinced it was worth the price I paid.”

Bodhi nods. “Yeah, that… That’s it exactly. I feel… I feel rotten, I feel violated, and I… I just don’t understand _why_. I had the message from Galen, I wasn’t lying, all he had to do to see that was watch the message, and he _didn’t_. Why didn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Cassian murmurs. “He’s been hardened by the war that he’s fought his whole life. I think he lost sight of his humanity at some point. Forgot what he was fighting for.”

_“She loved you.”_

_“I know,” says Cassian, who is unsure as to why Asori is telling him this._

_“It’s important that you don’t forget that,” Asori says. “It’s easy to, in this war. To forget the nice things. But those are the things we need to keep going.”_

Cassian swallows hard, and shakes his head.

He wonders how much he’s forgotten, forced away, the memories too difficult to deal with.

So many of them are resurfacing now.

“Do you think we can do it?” Bodhi asks. “Stop the Death Star? Make things right?”

“I think we can sure as hell try,” Cassian says, and this is the truth.

They can try. Maybe that will all that will be said for them, one day: they tried.

“I want to help,” Bodhi says. “The Alliance. Once we get Galen, and take him to the Alliance. I want to join.”

Cassian smiles, hoping his smile is more reassuring than he feels.

“Good,” he says. “That’s good. We’re glad to have you.”

“I want to help,” Bodhi says again, leaning back a little, his head bumping against the window of the U-wing.

Cassian straightens, and puts a hand on Bodhi’s shoulder.

“Get some rest,” he says, gently. “We’re still a few hours from Eadu. You’re gonna have to help me land this ship, you know.”

Bodhi smiles. “Yeah. Yeah. I can do that.”

“Good. I trust you.”

“I trust you too, Cassian,” Bodhi murmurs, eyes sliding closed. He begins snoring almost instantly.

Cassian turns, half-glancing to the back of the U-wing, and realizes that Jyn is awake, her eyes looking straight at him.

He stares back, leveling his chin, daring her to say something.

But she doesn’t. She only gazes at him, expression carefully blank.

He wonders how much she’s overheard.

He wonders if any of it matters. He doesn’t think it does.

He returns to the pilot’s chair, settling in, and leaning his head against the back of the seat.

K-2SO looks at him, but doesn’t say anything, for which Cassian is grateful.

He closes his eyes.

He dreams of monolithic gray moons crushing him into pieces.

* * *

Cassian is awoken three hours later by the soft murmuring voices of K-2SO and Jyn Erso.

He blinks, opening his eyes, taking in the sight of space, the stars whipping past the glass in front of him.

He turns his head, and sees that K-2SO is sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, head glancing back repeatedly, as Jyn Erso has squeezed herself into the space between K-2SO’s chair and Cassian’s, in order to speak quietly with the droid, and her hand is fiddling with the end of Taraja’s scarf in a mindless kind of way.

She catches Cassian moving, and nods at him.

“Good evening.”

“How far are we from Eadu?” Cassian asks.

“About ten minutes out,” K-2SO says. “I was going to wake you.”

“That’s all right,” Cassian breathes, rubbing his hands over his eyes. Now that he’s awake, that familiar stress and tension is returning to him, leaving him a little breathless. He sighs deeply, shaking his head.

“That was a nice thing you did. For Bodhi.”

Cassian blinks, turning to look at Jyn. “What?”

“Talking to him,” she clarifies, still speaking so softly, which tells Cassian either that she does not want to wake anyone in the back of the U-wing, or that she doesn’t want anyone to overhear her. “Telling him you understood what he was feeling.”

Cassian realizes that she thinks he was lying to Bodhi about Jeseej.

“I do understand,” he says. “I was not lying.”

Jyn stares at him. “A _Sljee_ \--”

“Yes.”

“Where did you meet a _Sljee_ \--”

“Coruscant,” Cassian says, rolling his shoulders back, refusing to look at her.

She’s very quiet though, and so he does look back. Jyn is staring at the floor, face pensive.

“Surprised?” He asks.

Jyn looks up at him, and shrugs her shoulders.

Cassian smiles a little. “You don’t know me, Jyn. I imagine there is… a lot about me that might surprise you.”

Her lips twist, but she cannot possibly argue, and Cassian takes pity on her.

“The Death Star,” he says. “Your father’s message. You really believe he’s built a flaw into it?”

A fire rages behind Jyn’s green eyes, and she sets her mouth in a thin line, raising her chin. “Yes. I do. And the plans are on Scarif, and we can _get_ them.”

“I believe you,” Cassian murmurs, and he does.

Jyn frowns. “Why?”

It’s a fair question, and one Cassian should probably explore. He straightens in his chair, and looks out at space, at the spinning stars and deep darkness.

“Because I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me,” he says at last. “Because I trust you, and I think you trust me, too. Because I do think we are on the same team. Because you did not care for the planet killer until your father’s message, and I think… I think part of why you did not care was because you did not think you could possibly destroy such a thing, and I think… I think you have no interest in things you cannot get a handle on, or control.”

Because she’s like him.

Because Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor are both criminals.

Because Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor are both survivors.

Survivors, with different definitions of what it means to survive. They were both child soldiers, both recruited by people they loved desperately; Jyn, by Saw Gerrera, and Cassian, by Nerezza. They both fought unquestioningly, even as the traumas added up, even as they lost the people they loved.

They have similar moral compasses, but while Jyn follows her own instincts, and her own beliefs, Cassian’s moral compass points straight to the Alliance, and what it tells him to do.

It demands a great moral cost, but he pays it, time and time again, because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. Because the Alliance is _good_.

Cassian Andor might not be good, but the Alliance is.

It’s the thing he believes in. The place he puts his faith.

He turns back, and meets Jyn’s wide eyes.

Ever so slowly, she nods. “Yes. Yes, that’s… That’s right.”

She looks so surprised, and another ghost of a memory flits through Cassian’s mind unexpectedly.

_“How you continue to surprise me, Cassian Andor,” Taraja says. “How glad I am to know you, how happy you make me.”_

Cassian closes his eyes for a moment.

And then he reaches forward, and picks up his headset. He glances back at Jyn, and nods. “Good.”

“Good,” Jyn repeats, and there is more warmth in her eyes than he has seen from her by far.

And then they break through Eadu’s atmosphere, and suddenly rain water is everywhere, and the U-wing is whining with the onslaught, causing the ship to shake violently.

“Go sit down,” Cassian snaps at Jyn, pulling his headset over his head. “And tell Bodhi we need him.”

Cassian’s stomach wraps itself into knots as Jyn struggles into the back of the U-wing, calling for Bodhi.

They’ve arrived on Eadu.

It’s time for him to lose Jyn Erso’s fragile trust.

* * *

Cassian doesn’t think he’s ever been this tense in his life.

He follows Bodhi around the ledges and cliffs that line the mountains of Eadu, the rain pouring steadily all around them.

The U-wing is completely wrecked behind them. The rain had been coming down too ferociously, and the sky had been too dark for him to get a good look at where the clouds ended and the rocky mountains began, and it’d been all Cassian could do to land without killing everyone on board.

Wada’s _crashing is an art_ philosophy had finally come through for him.

He expects Wada would still have given him a poor appraisal for the crash.

Ahead of him, Bodhi half-turns, making sure Cassian is still there, and Cassian’s heart sinks even more.

He knows what he has to do.

He has to betray Bodhi’s trust, betray Jyn’s trust, and kill Galen Erso.

But he _does not want to_.

Jyn and Bodhi both believe in him, believe that he will help them, believe that he will do the right thing.

Cassian doesn’t even know what the _right thing_ is.

Galen Erso _must_ die.

Cassian has been ordered to kill him, and he follows orders from the Alliance.

Cassian presses his body to the side of the cliff, using one hand to cling to the rock, the other carrying his rifle. He’s set it into the sniper configuration, ready, in case they manage to spot Galen Erso from so far away. Otherwise, he’s pretty sure he’s going to have to find a way into the Research Facility itself.

The Research Facility on Eadu doesn’t look much like the Weapons Research Facility on Fest. The one on Fest had been gray, designed to blend into the snow and ice that blankets Fest; this one on Eadu is black, designed to blend into the rocky mountains, illuminated only by thin lights.

But it is very much an outpost for the Empire, and Cassian despises it on sight.

He keeps walking, and tries to focus.

Jyn had wanted to come with him and Bodhi.

But he can’t have her here, can’t have her walking behind him, can’t have her realize what he’s really come out here to do. She’ll put up a fight, will try to kill him herself, and he isn’t stupid enough to deny that she has a chance.

But most of all, he doesn’t want to see that look in her eyes when he kills her father in front of her.

Cassian watched both of his parents die when he was a child, and the memories still pain him, as an adult. He doesn’t want to add to Jyn’s grief.

He and Bodhi find a lookout spot, and they crouch down there on the rock, facing the large platform that leads into the Facility. Cassian peers through his quadnocs, and is surprised to see a large group of people milling about on the platform, even with the rain pouring relentlessly above them.

He passes the quadnocs to Bodhi. “You see Erso out there?”

As Bodhi searches, Cassian adjusts his rifle.

He inevitably thinks of Gallamby at the Royal Imperial Academy whenever he has to use a sniper blaster rifle, and this occasion is no different. He tries to block out the Imperial Captain’s face as he shakes water off the trigger, and as he tries to wipe the iron sight lens clear of droplets, though they’re falling far too quickly for this effort to really have any meaningful impact.

“That’s him, that’s him,” Bodhi says suddenly, grabbing Cassian’s arm. “Galen, in the dark suit.”

Cassian takes the quadnocs back, turning them to face the platform. He spies the man Bodhi is describing instantly; he’s the only one wearing a dark jumpsuit. All the other men, who Cassian guesses are fellow scientists, are wearing white jumpsuits. Galen Erso looks to be about medium height, with long, thin hair, and a lined face. He speaks to his men, though Cassian can’t tell what he’s saying from here.

Cassian nods, lowering the quadnocs.

_“What’s your first step, Sward?”_

_“Get an eye on the targets, sir.”_

Cassian has his target now.

A rumbling noise comes from behind them, and Cassian turns his head in time to catch a glimpse of an Imperial shuttle, a Delta class, flying low through the canyon towards them. Without thinking, Cassian moves, wrapping an arm around Bodhi’s neck and yanking the pilot down.

He knows it’s unnecessary, knows it’s too dark and that he and Bodhi are too darkly dressed for anyone in the shuttle to see them, but he still moved instinctively, to protect the defecting pilot from Imperial detection.

When they straighten, Bodhi’s eyes are wide, staring at Cassian in amazement.

“Thanks,” he breathes.

“I told you, Cassian mutters back, “You can trust me.”

Bodhi only blinks at him.

They watch the platform, as the shuttle lands, and a squad of deathtroopers and a man dressed in white disembark.

“You need to get back down there,” Cassian says to Bodhi, jerking his head, indicating where they’ve left the others and the ruined U-wing. “And find us a ride out of here. Understand?”

“What are you doing?”

Cassian swallows, and hardens his voice.

“You heard me,” he snaps.

This is when Bodhi really pays attention, and takes in the rifle in Cassian’s hands.

“You said we came up here just to have a look,” Bodhi says, and that anger he’d had when he’d spoken of Saw Gerrera in the cell on Jedha comes back with a force.

“I’m here,” Cassian says, his voice sharp like shrapnel. “I’m looking. _Go_.”

Bodhi wavers, looks like he wants to argue more, but Cassian stares at him, keeping his face passive but his eyes sharp, reminding Bodhi of everything he’s done for Bodhi since Jedha, reminding Bodhi that _he_ _trusts Cassian_ , reminding Bodhi that Cassian has said he would help him.

Cassian almost wants Bodhi to see through the facade, to realize who Cassian Andor really is.

But he doesn’t. He chooses to trust Cassian, and it is a mistake.

Bodhi turns, and scrambles back down the slope, jogging back the way they came.

Cassian turns away, facing the platform again.

He raises the sniper rifle, setting it on the rock, and leans forward to look.

_“Twenty in just over a minute, from 300 meters up,” Gallamby says. “Couldn’t have done it much better myself.”_

Cassian gets Galen Erso’s head in his sights, peering through the lens.

_“Sward… you’re_ good.”

Good.

Suddenly, Gallamby is not the only ghost in Cassian’s head.

_“Most beloved boy,” says Gabriel. “Be kind. Be good.”_

Be good.

_But what_ , _six-year-old Cassian wonders in silence, on the way home to his mother_ , _does that mean?_

_How can I be good?_

Be good.

_“And I’ve spoken to Nerezza,” says Serafima. “She’s told me about the work you do for her, and for the Rebellion. Do you like this work, Cassi?”_

_“Yes,” says Cassian._

_“Why?”_

_“Because it’s good.”_

_“You think your sister is good?”_

Be good.

_“I’m proud of you, Cassi,” Nerezza says, squeezing his hands. “You… Papa died when I was your age, and I look at you, and think of all you’ve accomplished already, and I… I am very proud of my brother.”_

Be good.

_Zeferino frowns. “Are you no longer good, Cassi?”_

Be good.

_Cassian stares at his older brother. “I’m not good, Zeferino.”_

The ghosts of his family are so loud.

Galen Erso stands next to the man in white, looking at a line of his scientists. Cassian can still kill him.

_“One day, I hope you will understand why I have done the things I have,” says Gabriel._

“ _I love you too, Cassian. Be brave,” says Nerezza._

His father, and his sister, the rebels, the two that opened the door to the war, a door Cassian walked through without hesitation. The two Andors who Cassian has always understood, because they fought for the same cause, made the same sacrifices, believed the same things.

They are not the only voices he hears.

_“You are so good, Cassi,” says Serafima_.

_“Cassi, you’re already good,” says Zeferino_.

His mother, and his brother, the Imperial sympathizers, the two Andors who Cassian grew up not understanding, whose cause perplexed him, but who loved him nonetheless. The two Andors twenty-six-year-old Cassian realizes he relates the most to.

His mother, who Cassian realized last year he grew up to be more alike than his father.

His brother, who Cassian realizes was exactly the man Cassian would’ve become, if he’d chosen differently.

Their voices now, in his head

His family, who all loved him, in spite of it all. In spite of everything.

They always believed in him. Believed in his goodness.

They looked at him, the youngest child, and thought, _He is going to be better than all of us_.

And they hadn’t been the only ones.

Cassian shoves the hair out of his eyes, and refocuses his attention back on Galen Erso.

But the ghosts _are so loud._

It isn’t just the Andors anymore.

_“You’ve a good heart, Cassian,” says Wada. “Do not lose it. Do not let this war take your goodness from you.”_

_“You’re a good man, Cassian,” says Taraja_.

Wada, his mentor, his great friend, whose old parka Cassian is currently wearing.

Taraja, his best friend, the love of his life, whose old scarf is currently wrapped around the neck of Jyn Erso, the daughter of the man Cassian has been ordered to kill.

Galen Erso suddenly dives forward, waving his arms. The deathtroopers standing beside the man in white lower their blasters. Galen Erso has saved them.

_Be good_.

_How can I be good?_

He tries to focus on Galen Erso, but all he can hear are his ghosts, everyone he’s ever loved.

_Be good. Be good. Be good_.

_How can I be good?_

_Cassian stares at his older brother. “I’m not good, Zeferino.”_

Jets of red light fly past Galen Erso, and kill his scientists.

_Be good. Be good. Be good_.

_How can I be good?_

And then, clear as a bell, Cassian’s own voice in his head.

_Not by doing this_.

Cassian blinks, letting the rifle in his arms fall slightly.

Not this assassination. Not this heartbreak for Jyn Erso. Not this loss of trust for Bodhi Rook.

Cassian Andor is a spy. A liar. A killer. A torturer. A thief. An assassin. A bomber.

Cassian Andor is not good.

But he _wants_ to be good. Wants to be good, like he hasn’t in years.

He stares at Galen Erso.

_You can start now_ , he thinks, to himself.

He drops his face, and presses it to the rifle for a moment.

He breathes.

_Maybe… Maybe it isn’t too late for me_ , he thinks, and the thought unravels him.

He feels something in his throat and his chest, some kind of heavy weight, slip and fall away.

He knows what it’s uncovered, what it’s unearthed in him, what this old, distant feeling is.

Returned to him at last.

Lighting him up from the inside out.

Flowing through him like a wildfire.

_Hope_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> METANOIA, a word meaning: a change in one’s life resulting from penitence, or spiritual conversion.
> 
> All the dialogue you’ve never heard before, or scenes you don’t recognize, was made up by me, in my interpretation of how the events of ROGUE ONE played out beyond what the movie shows us. I borrowed background details from the novelization by Alexander Freed (and I clarify which details these are) and included quotes from the film, but I do not include dialogue quotes or extra scenes from the novel.


	47. Hope, Restored

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-six years old, and pretty sure he has never been more furious with anyone than he is with Jyn Erso currently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes direct quotes from ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY.

Cassian is twenty-six years old, and pretty sure he has never been more furious with anyone than he is with Jyn Erso currently.

They’re all piled into an Imperial Zeta-class cargo shuttle, flying back to Yavin 4. Chirrut and Baze are there, looking winded and tired, sitting close together. Bodhi is there too, checking the ship over, making sure he’s chosen correctly in vessel, that there is no hidden tracker that will alert the Empire as to where they’re headed.

And Jyn is there, too, and Cassian is _furious_ with her.

She doesn’t understand.

 _He didn’t kill Galen Erso_.

She has no idea what that means.

She only knows her father is dead, killed by Alliance bombs.

Cassian doesn’t know which squadron it was. He suspects Draven called it in, suspects Draven assumed Cassian to be dead when Cassian never confirmed he’d arrived on Eadu, due to the destruction of the U-wing.

Cassian had heard the news from K-2SO, that an Alliance squadron was coming in to Eadu, and he’d known what it meant, that the Alliance was going to bomb the Research Facility, to try to kill Galen Erso. And Cassian had seen Jyn on the platform, and seen that there was a good chance of her being killed.

 _By the Alliance_.

An innocent life. Collateral damage.

Until today, Cassian wouldn’t have so much as blinked an eye.

But he has that hope in him, this new drive, this new goal, to be good. To amend things. To atone for all the horrors he’s committed.

To try.

And so he’d run to the platform.

Too late to save Galen Erso.

But right on time to save Jyn Erso.

He’d managed to convince her to leave her father’s dead body behind, dragging her away, pulling her along with him. They’d run from the smoldering and collapsing Research Facility, dodging blaster fire from stormtroopers, climbing rocky hills and sliding down crumbling slopes.

And then this Zeta-class cargo shuttle was there, killing the stormtroopers behind them.

And the platform opened, and Bodhi was there.

And then from around another ridge came Chirrut and Baze.

And they were all, impossibly, okay.

And then Jyn had turned to him in the shuttle, with righteous fury in her face, that annihilating fire in her eyes, and she’d tried to burn him alive.

“ _You lied to me_.”

She was right, of course.

But it didn’t matter.

 _He didn’t kill Galen Erso_.

She was in shock that Galen was dead, and to be fair, Cassian was in shock that he hadn’t been the one to kill him.

So he hadn’t defended himself, not initially. He’d only tried to calm Jyn, reminding her of her shock, softly telling her that he knew what it was like, of course he has, he’d seen his parents die, and he remembers their deaths all too well. The shock can break her.

And he’d reminded her that _he didn’t kill Galen Erso_.

How could she not get that? How could she ignore it? How did she not understand how astonishing that simple fact was to Cassian?

He could’ve killed Galen Erso. He had every opportunity. But he didn’t. He made a choice.

_“Did I do the right thing?”_

_“You did the correct thing,” Asori says. “You did exactly what I would’ve done. I… I can’t imagine ever actually doing it, but yes, Cassian. You did the correct thing.”_

_“But was it_ right?”

This, Cassian knows, was _right_.

Not killing Galen Erso was _good_.

He told Jyn that he’d disobeyed orders, in a bid to make her understand the gravity of the situation, this amazing thing he’d just done, to hint at the hope that now smolders in his heart.

Her next words had almost undone him.

“ _Orders? When you know they’re wrong? You might as well be a stormtrooper_.”

A stormtrooper. A machine.

His biggest fear, his lifelong fear, thrown back in his face, at the very time he felt he had defeated it.

He dropped his composure, and _raged_.

He took her earlier word, _luxury_ , and hurled it back at her. He told her he’d never had the luxury of picking and choosing when to care; he simply always had cared.

(And he still does care about it all, but now he also gets to care about being good, to do what he thinks is good, what fits his definition.)

He’s been in this fight since he was six years old. That’s two decades of his life. It is everything he’s ever known, all he can remember.

(The ghosts have finally quieted down with his newfound hope.)

He thinks some of his speech might have affected Jyn, because her voice had become painfully soft.

“ _You can’t talk your way out of this_.”

Cassian knows who he is.

A spy. An assassin. A killer. A thief. A bomber. A torturer.

And, maybe, for the first time: good.

“I don’t have to,” he spat at her, leaning close, daring her to say otherwise, to attack him.

He knows who he is.

For the first time, he’s okay with that man.

He’s trying. He’s going to be better now. He has a chance.

He walks away from Jyn Erso, passes the silent Guardian, the exhausted protector, the sad Imperial pilot.

None of them have anything to add.

He climbs the ladder of the cargo shuttle, and goes into the cockpit.

K-2SO is there, in the co-pilot’s seat, and he turns, blinking at Cassian.

“You are angry, Cassian,” he notes.

Cassian laughs, shaking his head, and pushing his wet hair out of his eyes. “I’m fine, Kay.”

For the first time, he thinks he means it.

K-2SO looks at him for a moment, before coming to some sort of decision. He stands, moving behind Cassian, to one of the crates he’d carried from the U-wing to the cargo shuttle. He digs through one for a moment, his back to Cassian, who can only watch, bewildered.

When K-2SO turns back around, he’s holding Taraja’s old gray scarf.

Cassian’s breath catches.

K-2SO returns to the co-pilot’s chair, and holds the scarf out to Cassian.

“I thought you might want this back, Cassian,” he says. “Jyn Erso took it off when she went out on Eadu, but I thought you would want it back, since it originally belonged to Taraja Ya’qul.”

Cassian reaches out, taking the scarf, holding it in his hands for the first time in a year.

“Thanks, Kay,” he breathes.

The scarf looks much the same as it did the last time he held it; stained, a little tattered, a little thin, and all gray, no hint of that purple left.

_“You’re a good man, Cassian.”_

_“If you say so.”_

_Taraja sighs, shaking her head. “I hope one day you’ll believe me. And I hope I’ll be there to see it.”_

His heart aches, and he misses her, he misses her so much.

 _This is it, Tara_ , he thinks. _You were right about me. I’m trying to be good now. I wish you were here to see it_.

He loops the scarf loosely around his neck.

It smells like smoke, and ash, and it’s comforting.

“You’re welcome, Cassian,” K-2SO says.

Cassian looks back up at him, and smiles, and it is perhaps the truest, nicest smile he has offered K-2SO in years, longer than K-2SO can literally remember. It is enough that K-2SO appears taken aback, that he can only stare at Cassian.

“I’m really happy you’re here, Kay,” Cassian says, because he does not say it enough, has never said it enough, and he wants to now.

“I’m glad to be here, Cassian,” K-2SO says. “I want to be here.”

“I know,” Cassian says, and this is the truth.

K-2SO has always chosen Cassian, time and time again. He’s more loyal to Cassian than anything else, than the cause even, and Cassian doesn’t know how this could be, but knows in his bones that it’s true.

(The Corellian Resistance technicians were thorough.)

(But some things cannot be forgotten.)

(Not by a droid, who awoke one day completely changed, who awoke to the face of a sad young man, who told him that he was good now.)

K-2SO turns away, checking their route to Yavin 4, and Cassian leans back in his chair, and thinks of who he is, who K-2SO is, and how they’ve come to this place. It is a long, painful, wayward journey, but he thinks they’ve finally gotten somewhere, finally understand each other again.

K-2SO was never just a droid.

And he was never a pet.

And Cassian was never his master.

They were friends, and then they were strangers, and then they were co-workers, and now they’re friends again.

They’re finally back on the same page.

 _Good_ , Cassian thinks, and he is so grateful.

* * *

The flight from Eadu to Yavin 4 is much shorter than the flight from Jedha to Eadu, and so Cassian is only able to give Jyn a half an hour to cool down before he has to talk to her again.

He slips back down to the main cargo hold.

Baze is asleep, resting against the incline of the shuttle door, his cannon on the floor at his feet. Bodhi is sitting against the wall of the shuttle with Chirrut, and the two of them are chatting amicably, though they both stop speaking as soon as Cassian drops down.

They stare at him.

“Where’s Jyn?” Cassian asks.

Bodhi points towards the back of the shuttle, where a hatch has been opened, leading to the tiny cargo space just under their feet.

“Down there,” he says, voice soft. “She won’t come out.”

Cassian nods. He understands why Jyn has crawled into the smallest space she can. It was something six-year-old Cassian did after Gabriel died, escaping into the crawl space that was the attic of Serafima’s house, just so he could be alone for a while, away from the sympathetic mourners.

He walks towards the hatch, but is stopped by Chirrut’s voice.

“You are not as gray anymore, Captain.”

Cassian turns back to look at the blind Guardian.

“Still a little gray, though?” He checks.

Chirrut nods. “You will never lose it completely. You were born in the gray. It is in your very being.” He turns his head, sightless eyes blinking at Cassian. “But this gray now… It is brighter. There is more _light_ around you, Captain. It’s nice to see.”

 _Light_.

It is not something Cassian has gotten to dwell in much, in his life.

He goes to the hatch.

He drops below, sliding to his knees, bending down to look around the space. He can sit mostly straight if he stays on his knees, though his head brushes against the floor of the main cargo space above him, where the others are.

He blinks, focuses his eyes into the dark, and spots Jyn.

She’s curled in the space, still wearing her soaking wet poncho from Eadu. She has her legs tucked in tight to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, her chin resting on her knees, and she’s staring into the dark.

“Jyn,” he murmurs.

He crawls towards her, and she slowly turns.

“Cassian,” she says, acknowledging him.

She doesn’t yell at him, doesn’t try to attack him in the small space, and so he moves a little closer, but keeps about a foot of space between them.

He copies her position, drawing his knees tight to his own chest.

They sit in the dark.

“I’m sorry about your father,” he says.

He doesn’t think anyone at base is going to bother telling her as much, and he wants her to hear it. And he wants to tell her, because he is sorry. Even if he didn’t kill Galen himself, he knows how heavy the loss of a father is.

“Thanks,” Jyn whispers.

“I know how you feel.”

Her eyes slide to him, disbelieving. “Your father was killed by Alliance bombs?”

“Republic bombs,” Cassian says, and this is the truth. “He was at a protest against the Republic’s military expansion. Carida. I was watching it on the holonet from our house on Fest. I watched him get blown to pieces. I was six.”

Jyn takes his words in. “Are you lying to me?”

“No,” Cassian whispers. “I won’t lie to you anymore.”

She doesn’t look at him, keeping her eyes locked on her knees.

Cassian keeps speaking, to fill the silence.

“I did not understand my father for a long time,” he says, quietly. “He always apologized to me, for being away so much, organizing a cell of rebel soldiers on Fest. I did not understand why he was doing it, or why he felt the need to apologize. I didn’t… resent him, but I didn’t understand him. I did not understand why he was never home, or why he left my mother. It was only after he was dead that I realized that even though he loved me, and loved her, he chose the cause over our family. He abandoned us, for the cause. It was not an abandonment that resulted in any of us dying, but it… It killed our _family_. We were never all together again.”

It is the longest speech he’s ever given Jyn, and she listens.

He breathes, and waits.

“My father helped the Empire,” she whispers. “The Empire… The man in white, he found us on Lah’mu, and he… He told my father to go with him, to help the Empire. My mother and I were going to run, but she… She decided to go back for him. I didn’t understand it at the time, and I was… I was so _upset_ with her, for so long, because I didn’t understand why she would’ve abandoned me for a man who was helping the Empire.”

As she speaks, she fumbles for her shirt, and Cassian watches as she tugs out a thin, opaque crystal, turning it over in her hand.

“That’s a kyber crystal,” Cassian says.

It powers the jedi’s lightsabers. It might even be a kind of conduit for the Force.

Cassian wonders if this is why being around Jyn has brought his ghosts back to the surface.

He shoves the thought away, as Jyn speaks.

“Yeah,” Jyn says. “It was my mother’s. She gave it to me, just before she left me. She told me to trust the Force.”

She glances at Cassian, and he meets her gaze.

“I think… I think she knew what my father was going to decide, and she went back to try to show him what the Empire was. She knew exactly what it was, and what it was going to do. The man in white killed her. I saw it.”

Cassian nods.

A stormtrooper shot Serafima in front of Cassian when he was ten. He remembers the moment like it happened yesterday.

“My father chose the Empire, _for me_ ,” Jyn says, and her voice is rough, and trembling. “His cause was me, and it killed my family, and he still left me. But he insisted… it was all to protect me. That’s what he always said to me. _Everything I do, I do to protect you. Do you understand, Jyn?_ ”

Cassian half-smiles. “My father used to tell me that he hoped I’d understand why he did the things he did, one day.”

“And you do.”

“And I do,” Cassian agrees. “I’m not sure he was right, though. I don’t think leaving us was the right thing to do.”

“I’m so tired of people leaving,” Jyn whispers, and tears are sliding down her face.

“Me, too,” Cassian murmurs.

Jyn is twenty-two years old.

Cassian is twenty-six years old.

They look at each other, in the dim light from the single opening in the hatch.

“I’m sorry about what I said to you,” Jyn says. “I shouldn’t have said any of that. You’re right. You didn’t kill my father, and it isn’t your fault he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Cassian says. “I’m sorry that I lied to you. I won’t do it again. All right?”

Jyn looks at him, and nods. “All right.”

“What are you going to do now?”

Jyn swallows. “Try to convince your Alliance to go to Scarif. We have to get those plans. We have to stop the Death Star.”

“Okay.”

“What about you?”

Cassian sighs. “I’m not sure yet.”

He wants to be good. He wants to be right.

But what is the right thing to do, now? What’s the next step?

“You’re wearing my scarf,” Jyn says, suddenly.

Cassian snorts. “It was never your scarf.”

“Whose was it?”

“Mm.” Cassian hesitates, turning back to look at Jyn, but she only looks peaceful, relaxed, and a little curious. She doesn’t look like she hates him, or that she wants to burn him alive. Not anymore.

He reaches up, and runs his hand over the end of the scarf.

“Her name was Taraja,” he says. “I gave this to her, eight years ago, from a trip to Corellia. She used to wear it all the time, everywhere she went. I cannot count the number of times I’d see her walking towards me, with this scarf wrapped over her hair.”

Jyn listens, face sorrowful. “She died?”

“Yes. Six years ago. This scarf is the only thing I have left of her.”

“Oh, kriff,” Jyn breathes. “Cassian, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know--”

“It’s all right,” Cassian says, quickly. “Exactly. You didn’t know. Last year, I… I decided that having the scarf around, looking at it all the time… It was too painful. Too difficult. So I donated it to the Alliance, in case someone else needed it, although I wasn’t really convinced anyone would. It’s… It’s tattered, and stained. I thought I’d put it in that room and I’d never have to see it again. But then you were there, and you actually _picked it_. I could not believe it.”

“I liked that it had a history,” Jyn mutters.

“It has a _fantastic_ history. You chose well. And I think…” He sighs. “I think the fact that you saw that, and that made you choose this scarf… I think that was when I started to trust you. It made me think you valued the same things I did, even if your reasons for valuing them were different. I think we are quite a bit alike, Jyn. We’re just… parallel lines.”

Jyn laughs a little. “Parallel lines. That sounds good.”

They’re interrupted by Bodhi, sticking his head down the hatch and finding them in the dark.

“Kay-Tu says we’re ten minutes from the Alliance base,” he says.

“Okay,” Cassian says. Bodhi nods once, and then disappears from view again.

Cassian turns back to Jyn. “Are you okay?”

She nods. “Yeah, Cassian. I’m okay.”

“Good,” Cassian says. He jerks his chin, indicating the kyber crystal in her hand. “You should show that to Chirrut. He’d be thrilled.”

“Oh, he already knows about it. He _saw_ it.”

Cassian shakes his head, not even surprised anymore. “Of course he _saw_ it.”

Jyn laughs again, loudly this time, and it’s a pleasant sound.

Cassian offers her one last, soft smile before he turns, crawling away from her, going back to the hatch, and pulling himself out, back into the light.

* * *

Cassian doesn’t know how she does it, but Jyn manages to convince Mon Mothma to call a base-wide meeting with the leaders of the Alliance Council that are currently on Yavin 4, to discuss the Death Star.

He watches as Jyn confers with Bodhi, the two of them standing close and speaking softly, comparing notes on what all they want to say, as Alliance leaders, officers, and soldiers pour into the room around them.

Cassian is startled from his observing by Draven.

“Galen Erso is dead,” Draven says, and it is not a question. He already knows his squadron destroyed the Research Facility.

“Yes, sir,” Cassian says.

“What exactly is Jyn Erso going to say here?”

“There’s a way to destroy the Death Star,” Cassian says. At Draven’s bewildered look, he clarifies, “The planet killer.”

“Ah,” Draven murmurs. “Quite the name.”

“It’s accurate,” Cassian says. “Galen Erso created a flaw in the layout of the thing. We need to get the plans from an Imperial data vault on Scarif, so we can find this flaw, and target the Death Star.”

Draven stares at him.

Cassian had somehow managed to forget how wild this plan sounds.

“Based on the word of _Galen Erso_ ,” Draven drawls. “An Imperial scientist. And based on the word of _Jyn Erso_ , a lifelong criminal. I don’t think so.”

Draven doesn’t trust Jyn. Not like Cassian does.

“It’s our only shot,” Cassian says, quietly, eyes downcast. “We must destroy it, as soon as possible.”

“That’s true, but we can’t just send our ships and soldiers to some Outer Rim planet on the word of some girl,” Draven scoffs. “You know how ridiculous this is, Andor. The other Alliance leaders will agree with us.”

 _Us_.

Cassian has spent years thinking like Draven, drawing the same conclusions as him, following his orders faithfully, never questioning his decisions. He’s killed Garm Bel Iblis’ family on Draven’s orders, he’s tortured Alfie to complete Draven’s mission. Cassian has always assumed he and Draven are exactly alike, has long believed he will eventually _become_ Draven.

For the first time, he thinks, _Maybe I won’t_.

He knows, now, that he can be better.

“Go get some sleep, Andor,” Draven says. “I’ll find you tomorrow.”

He walks away.

Cassian looks around the room, and knows Draven is right about one thing: the Alliance isn’t going to approve Jyn’s mission, will not choose to send a squad to Scarif.

But they _need_ to go to Scarif. They need those plans.

He can go with Jyn to Scarif, to find them.

But they can’t go alone. Two people won’t be enough. They need more, need other soldiers, need people to fight alongside them, help protect them, while they search.

On the cargo shuttle from Eadu, Jyn had asked him what he was going to do.

He didn’t have an answer then.

He has one, now.

Cassian has always been nothing if not a survivor.

For the first time, he thinks, maybe, he can be a hero.

* * *

Cassian is not the only Alliance soldier who has struggled with the weight of his work.

He knows of plenty of others who have felt similarly.

He finds Melshi, in the cafeteria.

“Hey, you’re back,” Melshi says. He looks tired, blinking at Cassian over his bowl of soup. “You made it after all. Did Jyn Erso kick you too?”

“Melshi,” Cassian breathes, grabbing the man by the shoulders and almost knocking the soup off the table. “Melshi, do you remember what you said to me, before you went to Wobani? About how you were glad that you could do something good, for once?”

Melshi blinks. “Yeah. I mean… Yeah, I do, but Jyn Erso _kicked me_ , I have this massive bruise--”

“But you want to do good. You want to do more good things.”

“Yeah, of course,” Melshi says. “What are you on about, Andor?”

“Find everyone who’s ever said something similarly,” Cassian says. “I have an idea.”

Between the two of them, they manage to gather together about fifteen Alliance soldiers. They’re all men, which Cassian thinks is absurd, and very strange, as the most important friendships in his life have been with women, women like Serafima, Nerezza, Travia, Asori, Taraja, and Shara. But he couldn’t track down any of the female soldiers he’s worked with over the years; they’re likely on missions around the galaxy, or in the conference room, listening to Jyn’s pitch.

Cassian looks at the assembled soldiers.

He remembers being a recruiter on Fest, remembers cobbling together the best parts of his family, of Gabriel, Serafima, Nerezza, and Zeferino. He remembers creating a composite sketch of them all, becoming someone admirable, someone decisive, someone brilliant, and someone to be followed.

He is Gabriel, oratorial, and beloved among the soldiers.

He is Serafima, authoritative, and well-liked by all.

He is Nerezza, ferocious, and personable and invested.

He is Zeferino, cunning, and confident in his own righteousness.

He’s Cassian, the best parts of his family, and he wants to be good.

Cassian looks at the soldiers’ drawn faces, sad eyes, tired features. He sees despair, and loss, and exhaustion. He sees desperation. He sees yearning, for something more, something good.

He tells them he feels the same.

He tells them about his lifelong melancholia, his dread, his hatred of himself, of the terrible crimes he’s committed, and how he’s done them all without complaint, because it was the correct thing to do. He tells them about how he’s always wanted to be good, but as the years passed, came to believe it was just not possible for him.

The soldiers look at him, and he sees they understand him perfectly.

He tells them that he thinks they have a shot at redemption.

On Scarif. With the Death Star plans.

He tells them about what’s at stake. What happened to Jedha. How the earth looks when it’s thrown into the sky. How the ground trembles. How it all falls apart. How few can survive.

He sees their horror, their anger. They’ll need it.

They’ve all trusted him before with their lives, have trusted him to lead their missions, and so now he asks them to trust him once more, and follow Jyn Erso.

And most of them do.

Ten soldiers volunteer to go to Scarif.

It is more than Cassian expected.

More trust, more faith, than he probably deserves.

He’s going to do right by these soldiers.

They’re going to succeed.

They’re going to _win_.

* * *

There is one more person Cassian has to speak to.

K-2SO agrees to go to Scarif, because he wants to go with Cassian.

Cassian tells him that he has to go for Jyn, instead.

“But _why?_ ” K-2SO demands, tone very incredulous. “You’re going to be there. Why do I have to be there for Jyn?”

Cassian sighs. He should’ve expected this complaint.

“There’s one more story about you and Taraja that I have not told you,” he says, and he sees K-2SO completely freeze.

“The day Taraja died,” Cassian says, “She sat you down, and she told you to go wherever I go. The two of you were headed for the Galactic Opera House, and she wasn’t sure if she would even survive; at the very least, she expected you would get separated at some point. So she told you to go back to the apartment if you couldn’t find her. She said that she would meet you there. Or, if she died, that _I_ would meet you there. And she told you to follow me, wherever I decided to go, without her. And you agreed.”

K-2SO stares at him.

“I’m asking you to do the same now,” Cassian says. “You might have to make a choice on Scarif, to go back for me, or to follow Jyn. And I want you to follow Jyn. She might need your help. And if I’m not there with her anymore, it’s because I got caught up by something, or went to create a distraction. Or I died. And there is no point in looking for me then. Do you understand, Kay?”

“You want me… to be there for Jyn.”

“Please.”

“I don’t _want_ to. I want to go with you, Cassian.”

Cassian smiles. “I know. But this is better. For me, okay? Follow Jyn, for me.”

K-2SO gives the most exaggerated, disappointed sigh.

But he’s always listened to Cassian, in one way or another.

He agrees now.

He’ll go to Scarif, for Jyn Erso.

Just this once, he will prioritize someone else over the survival of Cassian Andor, for the survivability of this all-important mission.

It is exactly the kind of thing Cassian had once reprogrammed him to do.

* * *

Jyn Erso is looking at Cassian like he’s good.

He’s given her his own pitch, his own argument for why he and the soldiers he’s assembled should go with her to Scarif, how they are going to help her.

Everything Cassian has ever done, everything he’s ever been, has been for the cause. It’s always been enough for him, always a justifiable excuse, until now.

Now, he wants more.

He wants his work to _mean_ something. To do the most good.

To help destroy the Death Star.

It’s the ultimate Imperial symbol, the most vicious and inhumane thing ever created by the Empire. He wants to see it in smoke and ashes. He wants it gone. Destroying the Death Star would verify everything he’s ever done, help him believe that his existence has had a good, legitimate purpose.

If there’s a chance to accomplish this, to help destroy the Death Star, he is going to take it.

Bodhi announces that they can all fit in the cargo shuttle, and so it’s decided.

They’re going. This is happening.

Cassian tells the soldiers to grab everything they can, all the blasters and ammunition and bombs they can carry; they’re going to need them.

He walks to Jyn, and she’s looking at him like she finally, at last, _truly_ understands him.

Like she forgives him, for the things he’s done that have brought him here, to her side, in this moment.

Forgiveness.

It’s everything Cassian has ever wanted.

“I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad,” she says, and he remembers her tears in the shuttle, the pain in her voice, how everyone has only ever left her. No one has stayed.

He smiles a little, because of course he gets it.

His life has, arguably, been defined by the people who’ve left.

And the ones who came back.

The ones who came back, they’ve always given him such hope, such warmth, such devotion.

They’ve defined _home_ for him.

“Welcome home,” he tells Jyn Erso.

She believes him.

She takes her fragile trust in him, and turns it into faith.

He does the same.

His thin faith, gone from the Alliance, taken by him, and given to this woman, and this squad of soldiers, these people desperate for redemption, and something good.

He’s better for it.

* * *

Cassian goes to the medical wing, to grab a few more med kits, because Jyn, Bodhi, Chirrut, and Baze don’t have any, and he knows how helpful having a med kit in the field is, how it can save your life.

He walks into the medical wing, and is stopped by the sight of Kes Dameron, lying in a bed, his leg heavily bandaged.

He blinks up at Cassian, looking dazed, and Cassian expects he’s on some heavy pain medication.

“Cass,” he slurs.

“What happened to you, Kes?” Cassian asks, setting the med kits down, and taking one of Kes’ hands in his.

“Blaster,” Kes mumbles. “Shot straight through my leg. Gonna take lots of bacta to… to fix it up again.” He looks up at Cassian, smiling widely. “What’s up with you, buddy?”

He’s on some heavy medication indeed.

He won’t remember any of this tomorrow.

Cassian squeezes Kes’ hand.

“I’m going to Scarif,” he tells Kes. “And I’m probably going to die.”

“Wha--?” Kes frowns. “Cass, you can’t die.”

“It’s okay,” Cassian murmurs.

“No,” Kes says, shaking his head. “I’m going with you.”

He moves, meaning to stand, and so Cassian none too gently shoves him back down on the pillows.

“Kes, you can’t _walk_ ,” Cassian says. “There’s no way I’m taking you to Scarif. And I couldn’t do that to Shara, could I? Where _is_ Shara? Is she still on Corellia?”

“Yeah,” Kes mumbles. “Not back yet. Kriff, Cass. You really gonna die?”

“I’m going to steal the Death Star plans,” Cassian tells Kes, though he knows Kes doesn’t even know what the Death Star is. “And the Alliance is going to destroy it. Can you help them destroy the Death Star for me, Kes?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kes says, blinking, tears sliding down his face, sad even in his loopy, drug-addled state.

“Tell Shara bye for me, okay? And thank you. Thank you _both_.”

“Kriff, I feel…” Kes sighs. “I feel like we should do something for you, man.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Kes.”

“Sure we do. You’ve been… You’ve been real good, Cass. Real good. We’ll…” Kes frowns, blinking up at the ceiling slowly. “I got it. We’ll name our firstborn after you.”

And Cassian laughs, loudly. “Oh, kriff, Kes. _Don’t_.”

“Cassian Dameron--”

“My middle name is better,” Cassian says.

“You have a middle name?”

“Yeah. Jeron.”

“I don’t think I knew that,” Kes says, sounding hilariously puzzled. “How did I not know that?”

Cassian shrugs. “It never came up.”

“Jeron Dameron,” Kes tries.

“My family called me Cassi, when I was a child,” Cassian says. “Maybe you don’t name your son after me. Maybe you name your daughter after me.”

(Kes Dameron and Shara Bey will not have a daughter.)

(They will have a son, but they won’t name him after Cassian Andor.)

(Kes Dameron won’t remember this conversation.)

“Cassi,” Kes mumbles. “Yeah, I think I like that. Okay. I’ll remember that.”

Cassian squeezes Kes’ hand. “No, you won’t; the drugs are too strong.”

(Kes Dameron will fall asleep, and wake up tomorrow, to the news that Cassian Andor is dead, and that the Death Star plans he died to steal have been lost.)

(For a long time, Kes Dameron will regret that he did not get to say goodbye.)

“Thanks for everything, Kes,” Cassian whispers. “You and Shara, I… You both meant a lot to me, and I am so grateful for you both. I just… I wish you both the best. Good luck.”

“Good luck to _you_ , Cassi,” Kes says, eyes drooping shut as the medication overwhelms him.

He’s asleep in seconds.

Cassian lets go of his hand, and gathers up the med kits in his arms.

He walks out of the medical wing without a second glance.

* * *

The flight to Scarif is tense.

Scarif is in the Outer Rim, on the other side of the galaxy, and it will take the Imperial cargo shuttle three hours to get there.

Cassian looks at the assembled soldiers in the cargo bay, people who have gone against orders, who have chosen to believe in him, and Jyn Erso, to believe in this cause, to believe that they can steal the Death Star plans.

They are a truly remarkable squad.

 _Rogue One_ , Cassian thinks.

Flying for the first, and last, time.

(There is no Rogue One.)

(Not officially.)

Cassian moves from soldier to soldier, remembering how Nerezza did this during the flight from the Fest Rebellion base in Fulcra to the Weapons Research Facility on the other side of the planet. He memorizes these soldiers’ names, learns their homeworlds, gets an abridged version of their stories.

Cassian has always been good at talking to people.

And these are the most important people.

Arro Basteren. Yosh Calfor. Eskro Casrich. Farsin Kappehl. Jav Mefran. Ruescott Melshi. Pao. Serchill Rostok. Taidu Sefla. Stordan Tonc.

Jyn Erso. K-2SO. Bodhi Rook. Chirrut Imwe. Baze Malbus.

Cassian Andor.

 _Rogue One_.

He climbs up the ladder, to the upper level of the shuttle, where Bodhi is piloting with K-2SO in the chair next to him.

Jyn sits behind them, staring at the floor.

He crouches down in front of her.

“You ready?” He asks her.

She nods tightly. “Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.”

He sees the anxiety dancing in her eyes, recognizes the clipped way she breathes, the tight grip she clutches her blaster with, ready for anything, even this far in deep space.

“You really think we can do this?” She asks him.

“I think we’ve got a good shot,” Cassian says, and this is the truth.

“Those soldiers,” Jyn breathes. “All those soldiers, down below. I… I don’t want to fail them.”

“You won’t. _We_ won’t.”

Jyn looks at him, her green eyes meeting his brown ones.

“Are you with me?” She asks, and he knows it is this moment, this pause before the storm, this single breath before they jump, that has inspired her to ask it, that she needs his word, his assurance, one more time.

 _Have a little faith. Just a little. At least once more_.

He thinks of promises, promises kept and forgotten, promises made and never fulfilled.

He has an old one he thinks he’s going to satisfy now, at long last.

_“Keep fighting,” Taraja says. “Don’t stop. D-Don’t ever stop. Keep going.”_

Cassian smiles at Jyn Erso, and nods his head.

“All the way,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will never forgive the creators of ROGUE ONE for giving us a squad that was so ridiculously, overwhelmingly, male. (Ten Rebel soldiers + the gang, and Jyn is the only woman???)
> 
> Jeron really is Cassian’s canon middle name. Kes being shocked that he’s never heard it is a callout for me, because I wrote a 198k fic about Cassian Andor and somehow did not mention his middle name until the penultimate chapter.
> 
> The “Are you with me?” / “All the way” dialogue was in at least one of the trailers for ROGUE ONE, though it (obviously) did not make it into the final cut of the film. This was where I decided to set it in the story, and foreshadowed it way back in Chapter 30: All The Way.
> 
> All the dialogue you’ve never heard before, or scenes you don’t recognize, was made up by me, in my interpretation of how the events of ROGUE ONE played out beyond what the movie shows us. I borrowed background details from the novelization by Alexander Freed (and I clarify which details these are) and included quotes from the film, but I do not include dialogue quotes or extra scenes from the novel.


	48. The Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian is twenty-six years old, and once again wearing the gray uniform of an Imperial officer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes direct quotes from ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, and from the novelization by Alexander Freed.

Cassian is twenty-six years old, and once again wearing the gray uniform of an Imperial officer.

In front of him, Jyn Erso is tugging a black Imperial security uniform over her vest and pants. Her mouth is set in a thin line as she moves, yanking on the chest plate, and fiddling with the buckles that hold it together. The uniform is much too big for her, will make her look a little odd, but they don’t have any time, or the luxury of any choice.

Cassian shoves his hair out of his eyes, and knows that he’s also going to look a little odd and non-regulation, with his long hair, and beard and moustache. If he wanted to detract attention from himself, he’d cut it all off right now.

But he doesn’t want to. He’s likely going to be dead in half an hour.

If he’s going to die wearing a gray Imperial officer’s uniform, then he’s going to die looking as out of place as possible.

Unlike Jyn’s stolen uniform, Cassian’s fits him remarkably well. He straightens the jacket, adjusts the cuffs, turns the code cylinders in the pockets straight. He catches the ranking on his chest, and notes he’s a Lieutenant, and has to fight down a smile.

Joreth Sward lives again.

He looks up, meeting Jyn’s eyes. She’s finished changing and is staring hard at him.

“What?” Cassian asks.

“You’ve done this before,” Jyn says, and it is not a question.

“Yes,” Cassian says, because it’s the truth.

He spent two years in Imperial Intelligence on Coruscant wearing this very uniform. And then he spent a few days in a detention center on Jenoport wearing this uniform.

This is not his first time, not by far.

Jyn frowns at him, looks like she wants to ask, but decides either that there’s no time, or that the specifics don’t matter. She shakes her head, dropping down to stick a knife in her boot.

Cassian walks past her, moving out from the back of the cargo shuttle, and to the main hold.

The soldiers of Rogue One are there, shoving detonators in their pockets and loading their blasters up with ammunition. They watch Cassian as he passes, and he nods to them, shakes their hands, clasps their shoulders. They look at him with respect, with confidence, and Cassian returns the gesture.

He stops by Melshi, who’s checking his blaster over one more time.

“You ready for this?” Cassian asks.

Melshi looks up at him, and nods, even smiling a little. “Yes, Captain.”

Cassian can’t help but roll his eyes at the title.

“Can’t you see? I’m a Lieutenant,” he says, gesturing to the rank on the Imperial officer’s uniform.

“Aye,” Melshi says, nodding. “Hell of a demotion.” In a more serious tone, he says, “Good luck out there, Andor. If anyone can do it… It’s you.”

“Thanks, Melshi,” Cassian murmurs. “And good luck to you, too.”

He and Melshi shake hands one more time, and then Melshi goes to confer with Pao.

Bodhi steps up to Cassian, his dark eyes serious.

“Thank you,” Bodhi says, voice soft. “For believing us.”

By _us_ , Cassian knows Bodhi doesn’t just mean him and Jyn, but Galen Erso as well.

Cassian nods, and reaches out to squeeze Bodhi’s shoulder.

“Thank _you_ , Bodhi,” he says. “We would not have known what we were up against without your bravery, or your message. None of this would be happening, not without you. You’ve shown the Alliance that there are good people working in the Empire, good people that want to help us. You’ve given the Alliance an incredible amount of hope. We’re very grateful.”

Bodhi flushes somewhat, the smile passing over his face, true and relieved. “Brilliant. Yeah. Sure.”

“Stand by for my call, okay? We’re going to need you to get the plans out of here.”

“Course, course,” Bodhi says, and Cassian absolutely trusts the determination in his voice.

From behind Bodhi comes Jyn and K-2SO. Cassian steps back as Jyn hugs Bodhi tightly, murmuring something to him that Cassian doesn’t hear.

In the back of the shuttle, Cassian spots Chirrut and Baze, standing among the other soldiers. The Guardian seems to feel Cassian watching him, because he looks up, his sightless eyes training on Cassian. He grins widely, and inclines his head.

Cassian returns the gesture; he doesn’t know how, but he knows Chirrut sees it.

Baze gives Cassian an almost comically somber thumbs-up, and Cassian smiles.

Jyn steps up to Cassian, pulling on her helmet. “All set?”

“Yes,” Cassian says. “I’m your superior officer, so you’ll walk ahead of me out of the ship, but then I walk ahead of you into the bunker.”

“Someday, I think I’d like to hear the story behind how you know this.”

“Someday, I’ll tell it to you,” Cassian says.

(He won’t.)

(They both know this.)

Together, K-2SO clunking along behind them, they step out into the bright sunlight of Scarif.

* * *

At first, things go shockingly well.

They make it through the Scarif Citadel smoothly, with hardly any bumps or awkward moments. Even K-2SO, who has never felt comfortable in any Imperial buildings, who walks differently from every other KX-series Imperial droid, is not detected or singled out as an intruder. Instead, he’s an asset, following Cassian’s direction, successfully overpowering a fellow KX-series droid so as to upload the map and information for the Citadel for the rebels’ use.

When they can go no further without almost certainly being discovered, Cassian calls Melshi for their diversion.

He thinks of Nerezza, of the Fest rebels, of their guerilla warfare, the war they fight with bombs in tight city streets, as small groups of fighters against a far bigger army.

He channels his big sister’s voice, when he tells Melshi to _light it up._

He knows Nerezza would have loved this plan, this mission, the precarity of it, the desperation of it all.

The distraction works. Squads of stormtroopers run through the corridors of the Citadel, and no one casts a single glance at the lone officer, the short security worker, or the gawky Imperial droid.

They make it to the data vault.

There’s a solitary security officer in the antechamber, and K-2SO knocks him out with one heavy hit. They need the man’s handprint to open the large door to the vault, and as Cassian and Jyn drag the man to the door, K-2SO announces that he’ll have to stay outside, in the antechamber.

“What? Why?” Cassian asks, helping Jyn arrange the guard’s hand to be scanned.

It’s an extra security feature, K-2SO says. It’s impossible to access the data tapes in the vault without the assistance of someone at the command panel in the antechamber.

Plus, K-2SO adds, in the event that a security breach is detected, the interior tunnel leading to the vault can be magnetized, causing all data inside to be wiped. That would include K-2SO’s memory drive.

“I don’t want my memory wiped,” he says, voice stiff.

Cassian stills, causing Jyn to huff in impatience.

“Kay,” Cassian breathes.

“This personal interest will not affect the mission,” K-2SO says, seemingly ignoring Cassian’s look. “You need me out here to help you find the correct data tape.”

“Maybe I should--” Cassian starts, but K-2SO interrupts him.

“You must stay inside, with Jyn,” K-2SO says impatiently. “There are a lot of files to sort through, and you might catch something she misses.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” Jyn mutters, but she doesn’t disagree.

Cassian stares at K-2SO. “Kay, I--”

“Cassian. You must hurry.”

Droid and man look at each other for a moment, and Cassian thinks of all the things he wants to tell K-2SO, to remind him again that he’s forgiven for everything, that Cassian is so grateful he’s still here, how glad he is to have known K-2SO, how happy he is that he chose K-2SO in that hangar all those years ago.

He thinks, _If you got your memory wiped again, I would tell you the truth. I’d tell you everything. I’d make sure that you remember it all_.

He thinks K-2SO knows this, now.

Cassian turns away, back to Jyn, and they get the vault door open.

The interior tunnel is small, all gray, like the rest of the data vault. Cassian and Jyn walk through it, staring out the glass window at the end. Beyond the glass window is the actual data vault. They see now that it is huge, tall like a skyscraper, with three towers filled with data tapes, all looking completely identical.

Cassian understands now how they need someone on the outside.

“Okay,” he breathes. “Let’s start looking for those plans.”

* * *

And then things fall apart.

As they usually do. As Cassian had anticipated this mission to, from the start.

He doesn’t know how things are going with the rest of Rogue One, on the beach. He thinks of those ten men, of Chirrut and Baze and Bodhi, and hopes with everything he has that they’re doing all right, that they’re fighting the Empire like the heroes he knows them all to be.

They do have some backup; the Alliance had come through after all.

Cassian doesn’t know how the Alliance finally figured out where he and the rest of Rogue One had gone. He imagines it was obvious, once the stolen Imperial cargo shuttle called _Rogue One_ took off from Yavin 4, so soon after Jyn Erso had failed to convince the Alliance to send an official party to Scarif.

The fact that the Alliance has decided to help them means something to Cassian.

It tells him that all his faith, his years of service, were for a good organization.

It’s the Alliance, choosing to trust _him_ now.

He and Jyn pour over data tape after data tape, diving deep into Imperial records and research. Cassian knows they’re skimming only the surface of the Empire’s plans, knows he’d very much like to have more time to dig, to unearth more unknown horrors. But they just don’t have that time. The Death Star plans will have to do for now.

Assuming that the Alliance can get the shield surrounding Scarif down.

Otherwise, not even the plans are getting out of here.

Cassian doesn’t hold up any hope that he, himself, will survive. He’s expecting to die here, in this vault, wearing this gray uniform. He’s okay with it. His time has come, and he’s ready.

He’ll happily die for this mission, to get this information.

Jyn comes running back to his side, back from the antechamber.

“What were you telling Kay?” Cassian asks, having only heard their soft voices.

“I gave him a blaster,” Jyn says, and Cassian pauses.

He thinks of how, only yesterday, thinking of K-2SO with a blaster would’ve caused his blood to run cold.

It doesn’t now.

He’s letting that memory go.

It only holds him, and K-2SO, back.

From behind Jyn and Cassian, the vault door suddenly slides closed, trapping them inside the interior chamber, with no way to get out.

There is no explanation from K-2SO.

Cassian grabs for his comlink.

“What’s going on out there?” He calls.

K-2SO doesn’t respond. Jyn jerks her chin back towards the handles used to retrieve the data tape when they find the correct one, suggesting that Cassian continue trying to figure out how they work exactly.

He does, slowly, fear running through him.

K-2SO is all alone out there.

“Two screens down,” K-2SO calls suddenly, and Cassian breathes again.

Cassian and Jyn return to the data tapes, skimming through different divisions, parsing out where plans for the Death Star would be. With K-2SO’s help, they narrow it down to Structural Engineering, which is as good a place to start going through file names as any.

Blaster shots echo in the antechamber behind them.

K-2SO is shooting. Maybe killing.

Cassian forces his head down, listening to Jyn, as she recites project code names, a litany of unknown terrors.

“... War-mantle, Cluster Prism, Black Saber--”

And then she stops, and stares.

Cassian stares at her.

“What?” He asks.

“Stardust,” Jyn breathes, a note of wonder in her voice. “That’s it.”

“How do you know?” Cassian asks, bewildered, because Bodhi had never mentioned anything about Stardust, and Jyn hadn’t mentioned it from her viewing of her father’s message.

“I know, because it’s me,” Jyn says, turning to look at him.

Cassian feels a small smile cross his face, because she sounds absolutely certain, and they need that certainty right now.

He believes her.

“Kay,” he calls, returning to the comlink. “We need the file for Stardust.”

“Star...dust,” K-2SO repeats, and there’s something odd about his voice, something worn down, and Cassian doesn’t like it at all.

From above them, inside the vault, a data tape flickers with green light.

Cassian grasps the handles, moving them along the towers, until they reach the right one. He stretches forward, watching the manipulators skate up the tower, climbing higher, until he stops them in front of the illuminated tape. Ever so carefully, he turns the handle, and pulls.

The data tape comes out.

The vault goes dark.

Cassian and Jyn look at each other.

“Kay,” Cassian whispers, begging the droid to hear him.

From the comlink comes K-2SO’s voice.

“ _Climb_.”

Cassian freezes, staring at the comlink.

“Climb the tower,” K-2SO says, and his voice is _shaking_ and oddly staticky, but not due to static from the comlink, but from static originating from K-2SO himself, and Cassian cannot breathe, and he turns to look at Jyn, because he needs her to tell him that this isn’t happening.

Her face says otherwise, and she looks so sorry.

Cassian is in shock.

He was never supposed to outlive K-2SO.

“You can still send the plans to the fleet. If they open the shield gate, you can broadcast the plans from the tower; _climb!_ ”

“Kay,” Cassian says, as he has so many times before.

_“I feel more like Kay.”_

“Locking the vault door now.”

“ _Kay!_ ” Cassian is moving, moving to the vault door, a door he knows he cannot open.

_“I want to go with you, Cassian.”_

“Goodbye!” K-2SO calls, and then there’s a crashing noise, and a heavy silence.

Cassian and Jyn stand there, surrounded on all sides by that painfully familiar weight of the absence of someone who was supposed to be there.

“Cassian,” Jyn whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

And she does sound sorry, and he expects she really is.

Droids aren’t supposed to die.

He closes his eyes, and gives himself a moment to mourn.

K-2SO was present for so many key events of his life, from the death of Taraja, to Cassian’s induction into the Alliance, to Cassian’s torturing of Alfie on Jenoport, to this last, critical mission. He was there through it all, never wavering in his loyalty to Cassian, who he always held in high esteem, higher than anyone else.

K-2SO, who loved Cassian from the very beginning.

K-2SO, who died for him.

 _Goodbye, my friend_ , Cassian thinks.

He turns, and moves back to Jyn’s side.

“Kay was right,” he tells her, voice a little rough. He jerks his head at the vault. “We have to climb.”

“They need to get that shield down,” Jyn says, and she’s right, too.

Cassian fumbles for his comlink, and calls Bodhi again, and reiterates how essential closing the shield gate is, how this mission cannot be accomplished without it.

He sounds harsher than he really wants to, but K-2SO is dead, and Cassian is in mourning.

He pockets his comlink again, and Jyn pulls out her blaster.

“Step back,” she tells him, and Cassian does.

The glass separating the tunnel from the vault breaks into a hundred pieces, plummeting to the floor of the data vault, many stories below.

At once, a frigid gush of wind sweeps in from the vault, blowing over Cassian and Jyn.

And Cassian smiles.

The gray of the vault. The cold of the air. The height of the data tower.

The climb.

He’s a child on Fest again, looking up at a snow-covered mountain.

A teenager in the Coruscant Underworld, scaling a grimy stone building.

An adult on Scarif, staring at a metal data tower holding his last mission.

He can climb.

It’s something he’s done his entire life.

Jyn starts to strip, throwing off the stolen Imperial uniform, and Cassian follows her lead with enthusiasm.

He won’t die in a gray Imperial officer’s uniform after all.

It’s a comfort.

Jyn goes first, crawling over the ledge of the tunnel, toeing the wall and looking out over the gap between the tunnel and the tower. She gathers herself together, and looks back at Cassian for a moment, searching his face.

He doesn’t know what she’s looking for there, but she seems to find it.

She leaps.

She lands, hard, against the tower, but manages to catch herself, using the other assorted data tapes as hand and footholds. As Cassian watches, she climbs, pulling herself up the tower, headed towards the data tape called Stardust that Cassian had plucked out earlier.

Cassian crawls onto the ledge.

He breathes, and then he leaps.

He’s less graceful than Jyn, but he thinks this is because his hands and feet are bigger than hers, and the data tapes are harder for him to cling to. He climbs after her, the cool air of the vault tossing his hair into his eyes, and chilling his arms.

He ignores it.

It’s just the weather on Fest, the climate of the Underworld.

Jyn reaches the tape faster than him, and she stretches for it.

“I’ve got it!” She calls, and yanks it out from the mechanical arm.

The force of her tug causes her to unbalance a little, and Cassian’s heart skips a beat.

“Careful!” He yells, and he stretches his arm out.

He thinks of all the times he and Nerezza slipped on a cliffside on Fest, and how Zeferino was always there behind them, watching them, and waiting, ready with a steadying hand.

He thinks of how he and Nerezza used to laugh at Zeferino for his worry.

Cassian understands it completely now.

Jyn regains her balance, holding the data tape in her hand, a triumphant look on her face. She clips it to the back of her belt, and continues to climb.

They climb another few feet, until Cassian hears a soft hiss of sliding doors. He turns his head, and spots the man in white, that man from Eadu who’d killed Galen Erso’s scientists, standing on the ledge with a couple troopers.

“ _Jyn!_ ” Cassian yells, pulling out his blaster, just as the man and troopers start firing at him and Jyn.

They move even more quickly, moving sideways now, to escape the shooting range of their assailants.

Cassian doesn’t move as quickly as Jyn.

He focuses on firing instead, distracting the troopers and the man in white.

Jyn has the plans; she’s the one who really needs to complete this climb.

Cassian doesn’t.

He presses his body as tightly to the tower as he can, and he tells Jyn to keep going.

He knows she doesn’t want to leave him, and he doesn’t have time to reassure her.

He can only keep firing.

He takes out one trooper, and then the other, until it’s only him and the man in white.

“Keep going!” Cassian calls, as the man in white shoots again.

The shot hits a cartridge directly in front of Cassian’s face, sending red-hot sparks flying up at him. Instinctively, Cassian leans back from the fire, and loses his balance.

He falls.

He feels his body hit one support beam, and then another, and feels something inside of him _give_.

He thinks he hears Jyn scream his name.

He’s unconscious before he hits the platform.

* * *

The sun is blinding.

Cassian blinks, and tries to focus his eyes, and ascertain his surroundings.

He’s staring at a huge red sun, hovering before a milky blue sky, and yellow sand stretches around him, as far as the eye can see.

He turns around, and sees a black sky, and, of all things, a strange gray moon.

It _looks_ like a moon, could be a moon, but it’s covered in odd-looking craters. Almost mechanical-looking craters, manmade, artificial.

He’s never seen anything like it before.

He doesn’t like the look of it, and so he turns back around, to the huge red sun. It’s so brilliant, and warm, and just the sight of it gives him comfort, makes him feel peaceful and content, similar to how the light of the Angels on Iego made him feel, but even more so.

He blinks, and sees that someone is coming towards him, walking out from the dizzying light.

He lifts a hand to his forehead, and tries to shield his eyes, staring hard at the approaching figure.

A moment later, his breath catches.

He’d recognize that profile anywhere.

How many times did he see her approach him? How many times did he watch her walk? How many times did he pick her out of a crowd? How many times did he memorize the shape of her with his hands?

(He could never quite forget what her eyes look like.)

He can’t speak, as Taraja Ya’qul stops in front of him.

He hasn’t seen her in six years. Since she died.

She looks exactly the same.

She smiles at him now.

“Hello, Cassian,” she says, and oh, he’s missed her voice.

He drinks her in.

She’s wearing a long white dress, a brighter color than he ever saw her wear while she was alive, and her black hair is loose, hovering around her face, shifting with the warm wind. Her eyes are just as brilliantly blue as ever, her black skin smooth, her mouth wide and soft, and he could look at her forever.

“Taraja,” Cassian says, and his voice is so small.

“Look at you,” Taraja says, fondly. “I like this new look of yours.”

And she raises a hand, and presses it to his cheek, and he hasn’t felt her touch in years, has forgotten it.

Her fingers brush against his beard, and she never saw him with one, because he’d been working in the Empire during their relationship, and could never get away with it.

“Taraja,” Cassian says again, and he thinks saying her name might be all that he’s capable of anymore.

“I’m so proud of you, Cass,” she says. “You’re exactly the man I knew you were. Only difference is, you know it now, too.”

“Am I dead?” Cassian asks, and it’s a fair question, because Taraja is dead.

He scattered her ashes on Mantooine, and he realizes now that this sand, this sky, and this sun; this _is_ Mantooine. Or some version of it.

“Not yet,” Taraja says. “You have one more thing to do, Cassian.”

Instantly, Cassian knows.

“I have to climb,” he says.

She nods. “You have to climb. Jyn Erso still needs you. You can’t leave her now.”

“I know,” Cassian says.

“All the way,” Taraja reminds him.

“All the way,” Cassian repeats. “Kriff, I miss you.”

“I know,” Taraja says. “I miss you too, Cass. But we’ll see each other again soon. Very soon.”

Cassian blinks. “We will?”

“Absolutely,” Taraja says, and it’s a promise. “Until we meet again, remember?”

She steps closer, and kisses him, and Cassian can only close his eyes, can only press closer still, because this is Taraja, this is really her, and he has missed her so much.

She pulls back, and wraps her arms around him, pressing a gentle kiss to his cheek. Cassian closes his eyes, turns his head, and pushes his face into her hair, and inhales, smelling smoke and ashes and everything he has ever loved, returned to him.

“Until we meet again,” he breathes, and he believes it.

“Very soon,” Taraja repeats.

Cassian opens his eyes, and looks at the red sun, and feels the weight of the strange gray moon behind him.

Taraja’s voice is suddenly loud in his ear.

 _“Climb, Cassian_.”

* * *

Cassian opens his eyes.

He’s sprawled on a platform in the data vault, and he hurts all over. He can taste blood in his mouth, and his stomach and chest ache, which tells him he’s almost definitely bleeding internally. His lungs hurt as he breathes, his spine seems to have its own heartbeat, and when he presses a hand against his side, he feels some of his ribs _shift_ , and he knows at least two of them are broken.

It’d only been a few days ago that he’d last hurt like this.

He remembers Alkmene’s words.

_“You also had three cracked ribs, and two broken ones. The top of your hip was chipped, and the wall of your stomach was torn, and bile was leaking into your abdomen. You were, perhaps, thirty minutes away from dying of internal bleeding, or blood loss. Either one. It would have been quite quick.”_

Thirty minutes.

It’s enough time.

Cassian sits up, gasping a little at the pain in his chest.

The good news is that neither of his hips have been shot.

He looks up, at the data towers, and thinks he can see Jyn moving, almost to the top.

He hears Taraja’s voice in his head.

“ _Climb, Cassian_.”

Cassian grabs his fallen pistol, thankful that it landed next to him, and gets to his feet.

He goes to the data tower, and grabs onto cartridges.

He begins to climb.

The ghosts climb with him.

He thinks he can almost see Taraja, climbing the building in the Coruscant Underworld above him, now climbing on the tower next to him, turning back to him, and teasing.

_“Too slow, Cass!”_

He thinks he can almost see Nerezza, moving on the cliffs on Fest above him, now moving on the cartridges above him, turning back to him, and calling.

_“Follow my voice, you’re almost there!”_

It is the longest, most difficult climb of his life.

_“You’re almost there, keep going!”_

Cassian’s body groans and creaks with his movements. He can feel his ribs splintering, feel his organs shifting, and has to spit out mouthfuls of blood every ten feet or so.

_“Come on, Cassi, just one more step!”_

He makes it over the tower, and approaches several vents, opening and closing, letting in air from the blue sky above.

_“And one more!”_

Cassian pauses, and studies the vents, memorizes the times they open and close.

Nerezza and Taraja breathe with him.

Then he gathers himself together, and jumps.

He makes it through the vent, but at a great cost, wherein his hip, bruised from the fall and hitting the support beams, gets strained, and suddenly sends a red hot spasm of pain through Cassian, and he collapses against the wall of the vent, biting his lip hard to keep from screaming.

It _is_ just like Corulag.

He could almost laugh, if it weren’t for the debilitating pain, for the fact that he cannot put any weight on one of his legs anymore.

He looks up, and sees that the hatch above him has been left open from Jyn crawling through.

With his good leg, and his arms, and force of will, he pulls himself up, dragging himself through the vent and onto the top of the Citadel Tower.

The sky is so blue.

He staggers to his feet.

He leans against a steel support column, below the communications dish, and limps around the corner, his blaster drawn and ready.

He sees Jyn, unarmed and exhausted, standing in front of the man in white, who has a blaster trained on her.

The man in white is speaking.

“… on the other hand, will _die_ with the Rebellion.”

Cassian shoots the man in white.

Cassian’s arms are shaking, his body unruly from the pain, and so his aim is off, and he only catches the man in the shoulder. It seems to be enough; the man drops, and does not move again.

Jyn stares at Cassian.

There is more emotion, more gratitude, more hope in her face than he has ever seen before.

He keeps his blaster trained on the fallen man in white as she runs to the screen under the dish, and pulls a lever.

A woman’s voice speaks.

“ _Transmitting… Transmitting…_ ”

Cassian can only stare.

 _It worked. They’ve done it_.

They’ve stolen the Death Star plans.

They’ve sent them to the Alliance, waiting above.

 _They actually did it_.

Jyn is smiling more widely than he’s ever seen her. She limps to his side, and he sees that she’s been hurt, and he wonders if she hurt her leg in the climb, too.

She grabs onto him, and he gasps a little at the added weight.

He’s still looking at the man in white, anticipating that he’ll get up again, and so Jyn turns too.

She leaps forward, to go to the man, to attack him, to mutilate him, but Cassian wraps his arm around her waist and holds her back.

It doesn’t matter now.

They’re done.

“Leave it,” he breathes, pulling her close. “Leave it.”

Bludgeoning a dead body won’t make any difference.

It’s time for them to move on.

Impossibly, she listens to him. She deflates, leaning into his side.

“That’s it,” he says. “That’s it. Let’s go.”

She nods, and pulls his arm around her shoulders, and together, they begin to hobble to an elevator.

“Do you think,” he asks, his breath unsteady and his whole body trembling with its long death rattle, “Anybody’s listening?”

Jyn turns her head to him, and nods.

“I do,” she says, “Someone’s out there.”

She is so certain, so confident, so faithful, and he believes her.

He thinks someone is out there, too.

He doesn’t know how, or why, but he knows someone has gotten the plans.

(Miles and miles above their heads, the Death Star plans have been received by an Alliance ship.)

Cassian and Jyn stumble into the elevator, and Jyn presses the button for the ground floor.

As the elevator moves, a jet of bright green light shoots over Scarif, and takes out the communications dish at the top of the Citadel, and lands in the ocean, sending a cloud of energy and light into the sky.

Inside the elevator, Cassian and Jyn don’t see it.

They lean against the wall, and look only at each other.

Cassian thinks of how tired he is, how much pain he’s in, how he probably only has ten minutes before his body succumbs to its wounds.

He thinks of how he’s done, in so many ways.

He looks at Jyn, at her bright green eyes, and thinks that as far as the last face he’ll see before he dies go, hers is a good one.

“You came back,” she says, mystified. “I thought you were dead, Cassian.”

“I think I was, for a minute,” Cassian says, thinking of Taraja, and Mantooine, and that odd gray moon. “But I. You needed me. I wasn’t going to leave you.”

Jyn swallows hard, and he can tell that she’s overwhelmed by it all, by him, by his dedication.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

She steps forward, and presses her forehead to his.

“Jyn,” he murmurs. “Thank _you_.”

* * *

Cassian cannot walk.

Jyn all but carries him from the elevator, and Cassian thinks of how he has this weird history of women carrying him in and out of elevators, with Jyn on Scarif, and Taraja in the Coruscant Underworld, after Ethan had beaten him.

They walk out onto the beach, and Cassian, approaching delirium with the pain of his dying body, laughs.

“What?” Jyn asks, voice tense from bearing his weight.

“The beach,” he says, smiling. “We’re on a _beach_.”

Jyn glances at him, concerned he’s dying more quickly than she anticipated.

Cassian has just never actually walked on a beach before.

He’s glad he gets to, now, here, at the end.

The white sand stretches in front of them, stopping at a seemingly endless blue ocean.

In the distance, a wall of light is speeding towards them.

They stop to look at it.

Any pain-induced delirium Cassian may have been experiencing fades away.

“The Death Star,” Jyn breathes.

“Too late,” Cassian says, and it’s the truth. The plans have been sent.

He is not afraid.

He knew he was dead half an hour ago. It only looks now like he won’t die from internal bleeding.

He thinks of Jeseej, and of predicted killer gray moons.

(If Cassian and Jyn were to turn around, they would see the outline of the Death Star in the sky behind them.)

(But they don’t turn around.)

(They never see it.)

Jyn carries Cassian to the edge of the beach, to the water, and he collapses to his knees in the sand. Jyn slides down next to him, and they stare out at the billowing light.

Cassian turns to Jyn, and she must feel his eyes on her, for she turns back to him. Her mouth hardens, and her face twists, and she seems to be daring him, to be begging him, _Do not say something that will make me cry_.

He thinks of how the first time he met her, he’d tried to, to cut her.

He doesn’t want to anymore.

He tells her something that he thinks she needs to hear.

“Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn,” he says.

She breathes, her eyes swimming with tears.

She reaches out, and takes his hand, squeezing it.

“I’m proud of _us_ ,” she says, and it is exactly the kind of thing Cassian needs to hear.

He’s proud of them, too.

Of Jyn Erso. Of K-2SO.

Of Bodhi Rook. Of Chirrut Imwe. Of Baze Malbus.

Of Rogue One.

Of _himself_.

And it’s been a very long time since he’s felt like that.

Cassian smiles.

The light is so close now.

“Come here,” he says, and he forces himself up onto his knees, and he pulls Jyn Erso into his arms.

She’s scared, and she’s trembling, and he’s shaking too, and they’re going to die here.

Jyn Erso is twenty-two years old.

Cassian Andor is twenty-six years old.

“It’s okay,” he whispers into her shoulder. “I’m right here. I’ve got you. I’m not leaving you.”

_He presses his face to the gray-purple scarf wrapped around her head, a scarf that is far more gray than it ever was purple, and he closes his eyes._

_“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’m right here. You can go, Taraja. You’ve done enough.”_

Cassian breathes.

 _I’ve done enough_ , Cassian thinks, and he believes it, and he is so grateful for that certainty.

He can go now.

Though he’s closed his eyes, he opens them, as the wall of light speeds to him and Jyn.

He doesn’t want to die in the dark.

He holds Jyn more tightly, and he waits.

* * *

Cassian Andor does not die in the gray, in the clouds and the frost, the gray areas that defined his life.

Not at all.

Not even close.

Cassian Andor dies in a wave of brilliant white light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the novelization by Alexander Freed, Jyn does notice how neat Cassian is with the Imperial officer’s uniform, and says, “You’ve done this before.” Cassian doesn’t respond to this in the novel, but he does in this transformative work.
> 
> The novelization also does have one reason that K-2SO chooses to stay out of the tunnel as being because it could energize and wipe his memory. I wasn’t aware of this until after I’d written about K-2SO having his memory wiped in this transformative work, but it was such an interesting, and key, anecdote from the novel that I included it here. As a reminder, there is no canon evidence that K-2SO had his memory wiped in the past.
> 
> I cut that bit in the film where Cassian and Jyn mess up putting the Imperial worker’s hand on the scanner because it was stupid and there’s no way either of them would mess that up.
> 
> I have watched ROGUE ONE a lot and have come to the conclusion that Cassian does not get shot at the end there; it looks like he falls trying to keep his balance. And then he would not be able to make that climb up the tower with a shot leg, which is why I have him grievously injuring his leg near the very end of the climb.
> 
> All the dialogue you’ve never heard before, or scenes you don’t recognize, was made up by me, in my interpretation of how the events of ROGUE ONE played out beyond what the movie shows us. I borrowed background details from the novelization by Alexander Freed (and I clarify which details these are) and included quotes from the film, but I do not include dialogue quotes or extra scenes from the novel.
> 
> An Afterward to go...


	49. Afterward: Mnemonics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no Rogue One.
> 
> Not officially.

There is no Rogue One.

Not officially.

What there is, officially, is Rogue Two. And Rogue Three. And Rogue Four, Rogue Five, Rogue Six. There is an entire flight group, called Rogue Squadron, led by new rebel and budding jedi knight Luke Skywalker as Rogue Leader.

Rogue Squadron will eventually go down in galactic history as the Rebel Alliance’s most elite starfighter squadron. Their pilots will be critical in fighting the Empire in the battles of Hoth and Endor, and will even later be involved in the Liberation of Coruscant and the rise of the New Republic.

But before all of this, Rogue Squadron is founded by Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles, following the Battle of Yavin.

And before the Battle of Yavin, Rogue One, unofficial, unsanctioned, unapproved, flies for the first and last time.

(There is no Rogue One.)

(There is no Rogue One, because it was never officially approved, for the short period that it existed.)

Four months after the Battle of Yavin, the Rebel Alliance plans a strike against a legendary and nefarious outpost the Empire has long been understood to be using to conduct terrible and inhumane experiments.

The outpost is the Weapons Research Facility, on a little-known gray planet called Fest, in the Outer Rim.

The Alliance, working with the Atrivis Sector Force, a group that is a part of the Alliance and includes members of what was once known as the Fest Rebellion, and before that only as a tiny Insurrectionist Cell on Fest, break into the Weapons Research Facility and steal phrik, a supermetal, a crown jewel in the Empire’s defensive strategy.

During the second raid, a handful of rebels are unable to escape.

Luke Skywalker flies in as Rogue Leader, bringing with him Rogue Squadron, to get the rebels out.

Rogue Squadron consists of Rogue Leader, Rogue Two, Rogue Three, Rogue Four, Rogue Five, and Rogue Six.

(There is no Rogue One.)

Rogue Squadron attacks the Weapons Research Facility as their fellow rebels flee the building. They fly low over the gray ice plateaus and gray rocky mountains that cover Fest, and they drop bombs on the Facility. They take out the missile turrets, and the Imperial Walkers that guard them. Luke Skywalker himself shoots down the shield generator that protects the Facility, and the rest of Rogue Squadron destroys the main building and its smaller outposts in a haze of red and blue lights.

The significance of this moment is likely lost on all members of Rogue Squadron, and the entire Rebel Alliance at large.

Because while the Weapons Research Facility on Fest is notable, it’s also one of several Imperial Weapons Research Facilities across the galaxy.

And while Rogue Squadron will go down in galactic history for its greatness, in this moment, they’re a four-month old squadron with very little experience, and destroying one Weapons Research Facility isn’t that remarkable.

But the fact that it is Rogue Squadron that takes out the Weapons Research Facility on Fest is _everything_.

Here is what Rogue Squadron, and the Alliance, know, about Rogue One, which never officially existed:

They know that Rogue One was named by Bodhi Rook, an Imperial pilot turned rebel, who alerted them of the Death Star and carried a message that led the Rebel Alliance to the plans that told them how to destroy it.

They know that Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus, monks turned warriors turned rebels, joined Rogue One, even though they had every reason not to go, but that their love for their lost planet, their love for the Force, and their love for each other, got them on that stolen Imperial ship and took them to Scarif.

They know that Jyn Erso, a criminal turned rebel, demanded the Rebel Alliance go after the Death Star plans on Scarif. They know that she is the spark that got Rogue One up and running, that set the chain of events in motion that crippled the Empire’s most dangerous and deadly weapon, blown to pieces by eventual Rogue Leader Luke Skywalker.

And they know that while Jyn Erso was the match that sparked the fire that became Rogue One, they know that Cassian Andor, Alliance Captain turned rebel, was the gasoline that built the fire and kept it going, that sustained it, that carried it, that ushered it into greater existence until it became a wildfire.

Bodhi Rook, Chirrut Imwe, Baze Malbus, Jyn Erso, and Cassian Andor are all names that Rogue Squadron knows. Unofficially.

Because Rogue One never got to exist. Officially.

(There is no Rogue One.)

What Rogue Squadron does not know is that Cassian Andor, who died on Scarif, who died after sending the Alliance the plans that would destroy the Death Star, came to them from Fest.

They do not know that Cassian Andor was six years old when he joined his father’s Insurrectionist Cell on Fest.

They do not know that Cassian Andor was twelve years old when he encountered the true evil of the Empire within the walls of the Weapons Research Facility on Fest.

They do not know that Cassian Andor was thirteen years old when he left Fest, bound for Coruscant, to shape the Coruscant Rebellion, to infiltrate the Empire at its core.

They do not know that Cassian Andor was twenty-one years old when he returned to Fest, heartbroken, and lost, and rejoined the Fest Rebellion to rediscover himself, to remember who he was, and why he fought.

They do not know that Cassian Andor was twenty-two years old when he left Fest for the last time, leaving the Fest Rebellion in better shape than he’d found it, leaving it to grow and become the Atrivis Resistance Group and then the Atrivis Sector Force, a group legendary for its resilience and brilliance.

They do not know that the Alliance hero Cassian Andor was born on this frigid, gray planet, a planet that was locked under the thumb of the Empire and at the mercy of whatever terrors it was developing inside the Facility.

These are all things Rogue Squadron does not know as they raze the Weapons Research Facility to the ground.

What they do know, is that a little bit of the Empire’s gross maliciousness has been destroyed.

What they do know, is that Fest, cold, ice-covered, and so gray, is freed at last from the Empire.

What they do know, is that there is no Rogue One.

Not officially.

But it _did_ exist.

Because there is Rogue Squadron, and Rogue Squadron was named in honor and in memory of Rogue One.

And there was Cassian Andor, who captained Rogue One, and Cassian Andor was from Fest.

Cassian Andor is dead, but his gray homeworld of Fest is far from it. As Rogue Squadron flies away, they leave the Empire’s Weapons Research Facility in smoking pieces, to eventually sink under the ice, to be buried under frost and snow.

It’s been four months since Cassian Andor died.

He has not been forgotten. His memory lives on, with Rogue Squadron. And with Fest itself.

Rogue Squadron: brave, legendary, and heroic.

Fest: wintry, resilient, and gray.

In spite of it all. In spite of everything.

A squadron that continues to fly.

A planet that continues to endure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Old EU canon, there actually *was* a Rogue One: Wedge Antilles. But the Old EU is no longer canon, and I think it’s safe to say that ROGUE ONE has very definitively taken over that callsign.
> 
> The destruction of the Weapons Research Facility on Fest in 0 ABY by Rogue Squadron was an Old EU canon event. It seemed too perfect for this story to ignore.
> 
> A few quick words of thanks:
> 
> Big thanks to TheGoldenGroups, who faithfully commented on so many chapters, with such nice words, and was just generally a delight. They were often the reason I felt like it was worth it to keep posting here, and I so enjoyed their responses.
> 
> Research sources include THE REBEL ALLIANCE SOURCEBOOK (1994), Wookieepedia, the novel ROGUE ONE by Alexander Freed, and the film ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY. Big thanks to Inter-Library Loans at my university for getting me the SOURCEBOOK, Wookieepedia for being so fucking detailed, Alexander Freed for offering a few jumping-off points in Cassian’s history, and ROGUE ONE for coming out on iTunes in time for my Spring Break. This story would not have gotten this far without any of them, for so many reasons.
> 
> I am most grateful to my best friend, Megan, who read every single word of this Nonsense, and who was so supportive, so kind, and so patient with me through it all. She was always ready and willing to meta the shit out of ROGUE ONE for hours and hours, and sat through multiple screenings of the film over Winter and Spring Breaks with enthusiasm. She created playlists to inspire and motivate me, and to signal how invested she was in the story, and how much thought she’d given it. She is always just the best, but she really went above and beyond during the three months I spent obsessing over this story, and I would not have finished it without her smart, thoughtful, and generous comments.
> 
> I started this story on December 28, 2016, not really sure what I was doing, and finished April 1, 2017, with a 198k novel. (No joke.) The initial thought behind the story was “ROGUE ONE was pretty tragic, but I could make it MORE tragic”, because that’s where I live, I guess. But the story quickly became more than that, a kind of biography with themes surrounding sacrifice, spirituality, absolution, and family. I was fascinated by Cassian Andor from the moment he kills a man in our introduction to him; what kind of hero, what kind of Rebel Alliance soldier, does that? I had to know more, and thus, GRAY AREAS, where the answer is: a morally gray one who earns his redemption at the end.
> 
> If you read the story and liked it, please do drop a line, either here or on tumblr (I am theputterer there too.) I am always down to talk about STAR WARS and my son Cassian Andor, obviously.


End file.
